As was earlier reported by the Spanish media outlet, Marca, Rafael Nadal has been diagnosed with a 7mm tear in the abdomen and he has withdrawn from the ongoing Wimbledon. Nadal had played through pain against Taylor Fritz in the quarterfinals at SW19 on Wednesday in a thriller five-set contest.
The Spaniard had called out for a medical timeout in the second set against the American after feeling discomfort in his abdomen. In fact, Nadal has been playing through the tournament with the same injury but had refused to talk about it. However, Nadal admitted that it got worse in the quarterfinal clash against Taylor Fritz.
Australia’s Nick Kyrgios has now qualified for his first slam final.
“Nadal suffers a break of seven millimeters in one of the abdominal muscles and wants to try to play the semifinal,” MARCA reported.
On the other hand, Nadal’s father, Sebastian, and his sister Maria Isabel wanted him to retire after he was struggling with his injury. However, Nadal revealed in the post-match press conference that he hates to retire and wanted to complete the match irrespective of the result.
Nadal also revealed that the Centre Court crowd support spurred him on when he had his backs against the wall against Fritz.
“Unfortunately, as you can imagine if I am here, I have to pull out from the tournament,” Nadal told a room of reporters Thursday. “As everybody saw yesterday, I have been suffering with pain in abdominal. I know something was not OK there, as I said yesterday.”
“I made my decision because I believe that I can’t win two matches under these circumstances,” Nadal said. “I can’t serve. [It’s] not only that I can’t serve at the right speed, it’s that I can’t do the normal movement to serve.
The Spaniard added he took the decision to pull out of Wimbledon as he will not be able to be competitive on the court because of the injury.
“I have to say that, imagine myself winning two matches, and for respect to myself in some way, I don’t want to go out there, not be competitive enough to play at the level that I need to play to achieve my goal, and with a big chance to make the things much worse, no?”
Nadal revealed it might take him three to four weeks to recover from the injury.
