Spanish sites Relevo, Mundo Deportivo and El Espanol reveal that Rafael Nadal will announce his withdrawal from Roland-Garros on Thursday during a press conference.
This is the bad news that all tennis fans dreaded, but which has become more and more credible over the weeks. According to at least three Spanish sites (Relief, Sports world, The Spanish), Rafael Nadal will announce Thursday at a press conference his package for Roland-Garros, which begins in eleven days.
Information obviously to be taken with a grain of salt, but no one will fall off their chair when they learn it if it is made official on Thursday, because the almost 37-year-old Mallorcan has not played a match in competition since his hip injury which occurred in second round of the Australian Open in January. It is hard to imagine the man with 22 Grand Slam tournaments summoning the press to his Balearic Academy to announce that he will be making the trip to Paris in order to aim for a fifteenth Mousquetaires Cup.
No, it probably needs to be resolved. For the first time since 2004, when a stress fracture in the ankle had deprived him of a first participation, he who was then already 49th in the world at not even 18 years old, Rafael Nadal will not play Porte d’Auteuil.