Rafa Nadal pulls out of French Open due to wrist injury

Spaniard advised by doctors not to play on

A miserable Rafa Nadal confronts the end of his French Open (Getty)

Rafael Nadal’s attempt to win the French Open for a 10th time will have to wait another year after the Spaniard pulled out of the tournament because of an injury to his left wrist. An emotional Nadal announced the news here on Friday at what he called “one of the toughest press conferences of my career”.

Nadal said that he had arrived at Roland Garros last week with inflammation in a tendon and had attempted to play through the pain, but the problem had got worse despite having an anaesthetic injection in his wrist before his second-round match against Facundo Bagnis. He said he had been told by doctors that there was no way he could play five more matches here, which he would have had to do to win the tournament.

“I arrived here with a little bit of pain but it was something that I thought I was able to manage,” Nadal said. “Every day it was a little bit worse. We tried to do all the treatments possible. Every day we spent a lot of hours working so hard to try to play. Yesterday I played with an anaesthetic injection in my wrist to numb it so that I could play.

“I was able to play, but last night I started to feel more and more pain, and today in the morning I felt that I could not move the wrist much, so I came here, did an MRI scan. The results are not positive.

“If this was not Roland Garros I would probably not have taken the risk of playing the first two rounds, but this is the most important event of the year for me so we tried our best. We took risks.”

The news is an especially hard blow for Nadal given that in recent weeks he had been in his best form for two years. After winning the title here in 2014 he suffered a number of physical problems and had, by his standards, a mediocre season in 2015. This year, however, he had looked much more like his old self, especially during the European clay-court season, which he began by winning the Monte Carlo Masters.

“Today is one of the toughest press conferences in my career, having to pull out of the tournament that has been the most important in my career,” he said. “At the same time it’s a tournament where I feel that if I am well I always have my chances. I have worked so hard to recover the level and I thought I was there. I played the last month and a half at a very high level and I felt I was ready for this tournament.”

He added: “This is a tournament that I love so much. I feel the love of the people. Not only do I feel that the crowd is supporting me a lot, but I’ve also always had a good relationship with all the people who work in the tournament. It’s a very tough moment because you wait for these two weeks for the whole year. But it’s just part of life. I’m going to keep going hard to recover as quickly as possible and try to be back the next couple of years here to have some more opportunities.”

Injuries to the wrist are among those that tennis players fear most. Juan Martin del Potro has never been the same since undergoing wrist surgery not long after his 2009 US Open triumph, while Britain’s Laura Robson has been struggling to get back to her previous level after suffering a similar problem.

Nadal, who will turn 30 next week, has had wrist problems in the past. Two years ago he missed the US Open because of an injury to his right wrist and before the start of this year’s clay-court season he had a different problem with his left wrist.

He said the current injury had first troubled him at the Madrid Masters earlier in the month. He went to Barcelona for extensive tests but was told there was no major problem and played the following week in Rome, where he took anti-inflammatories. He played three matches in Rome, but when he returned home to Majorca last week the pain got worse.

Nadal said he had been advised that he would not need surgery. He also felt it did not compare with some of the knee injuries that have interrupted his career in the past. “There is a solution for this - and not a very long-term solution,” he said. “We hope it’s going to be quick.”

However, it remains to be seen how Nadal’s injury will affect his plans for the grass-court season. “We’re going to work hard to be ready for Wimbledon,” he said. “For the moment I need a couple of weeks with the wrist immobilised.”

Rafa Nadal during his second round match

The immediate beneficiary of Nadal’s withdrawal will be his fellow Spaniard, Marcel Granollers, who was due to play him in the third round on Saturday. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga is now the highest seed left in what was Nadal’s quarter of the draw. Looking further ahead, Novak Djokovic was seeded to meet Nadal in the semi-finals.

Andy Murray, who is in the other half of the draw, said he knew Nadal had been struggling with his wrist and that he had seen the Spaniard grimacing with pain when he had practised with him. “There’s a big opportunity there for the guys in that section [of the draw],” he said.

For the tournament itself, the withdrawal of the Spaniard is clearly a huge blow, especially given the absence of Roger Federer, who pulled out last week with a back problem, and of Maria Sharapova, who failed a drugs test earlier this year.

Another of the competition’s biggest names went out when Australia’s Nick Kyrgios was beaten 6-2, 7-6, 6-2 by Richard Gasquet, who is through to the fourth round of his home Grand Slam event for the fifth time in six years. Kyrgios, who made 44 unforced errors, had treatment on his left shoulder towards the end of the first set.