Rafael Nadal is still not 100% sure that he’ll play the Montreal Masters tournament, according to statements he made in an interview with Spanish television recently. He says his tendinitis plagued knees are feeling better, but maybe not good enough for the rigors of a hard court Masters event.
“I don’t know (if I’ll play). I would like to be in Montreal in a week and a half. I will have to push it in the next few days and see.” via Yahoo!Sports
Here are some more interesting quotes translated via RafaelNadal.com and SportsYa:
Nadal hopes he’s “all good”:
“Good, the truth is that I feel good. But also, I have to wait and see how I continue to recover because I’ve only been back training for a week and a half and you always feel a bit better initially. You start with lots of hope, but again, the real test would be to see how I go when I really push my knees and I think that is likely to happen in the upcoming days. So I hope it’s all good.”
The real story on the knee pain, and the disappearing knee-tape:
“What happened was that I was in a lot of pain for a while, when I came back from Miami and I was training in Manacor, I started to feel a strong pain, especially in my right knee. It was a different kind of pain [to what I’ve experienced before], so I took off the bandages in my knees. . .and everyone thought that it was because I felt great, but the problem was that it didn’t hurt below the knee anymore, now it hurt above the knee. And well, the bandages weren’t helping me at all and that’s when it all started to get worse, little by little.”
Rafa admits that “mistakes were made” (but who made them?):
“The best thing could have been to rest three weeks after the Rome Masters in order to be physically ok at the French Open. I didn’t do it and I went to Madrid. Every step I took was a mistake, although nobody told me I would have been okay for Paris if I had dodged Madrid. . .It was my mistake, for sure. I’m the one to blame for this. The thing is that I could never learnt when to stop to take a rest.”
(So is Rafa saying “Ef you, Uncle Toni!” or not?)
Scarier than a pissed off Toni: Nadal also says that he’s wearing a “magnetotherapy device” to bed, which makes it hard to sleep because it involves lots of wires wrapped around his legs. Yikes!
Sorry Nadal fans, this is about as specific as Rafa gets on his goals for the future:
“Being the no. 1 is not my goal. The only thing I want is to be fine, to be happy on the court and play tennis better and better everyday, although there are people who may find it hard to understand or believe it. My only concern is to have my knees healed.”
And for anyone who thinks that his problems are stictly mental (eh, Boris?) or aggravated by his parents’ separation, Rafa’s answer is simple: “My real problem is the knees.” (via Eurosport)
My verdict: I’m starting to think of Rafael Nadal’s knee injury a bit like Maria Sharapova’s shoulder. It’s not something that will heal quickly or all-at-once, it might need surgery, and everyone, including Nadal, is going to have to learn to be patient and live with uncertainty.
Vamos, Rafa! Just take your time, okay?
Nadal News has a video of his interview with the TVE network (in Spanish) – click here to check it out.
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