Rafael Nadal, who will become No. 1 in next week’s rankings, says he felt pain in his knee during his three-set quarterfinal win over Fabio Fognin. Nadal recently missed seven months between 2012 and 2013 with knee trouble, returning at Indian Wells in March.
“When something happens in a place that is sensitive for me, you get scared, first thing,” Nadal told reporters. “Second thing, I felt pain at the beginning. I don’t feel comfortable with my movements for all the match, but it’s true that I improved during the match. I finished the match with a little bit more confidence on my movements than what I had during the first set and almost two sets. But I really hope that it’s only a bad movement.
“When something happened like this in the first point in the match, your knee, the memory stays there and is very difficult to be 100 percent focused on the match because you are thinking about if I really did a bad movement or not. I don’t felt power on the knee when I was running to the balls for long time in the match, but what’s very positive is I really was feeling better and better during the match. So if something very bad happening, going to be the opposite.”
If Nadal finishes this season as No. 1, he’ll become the first player to finish in the top spot three years after losing the year-end No. 1 ranking.
Ivan Lendl and Roger Federer also returned to No. 1 after being overtaken in 1989 and 2009, respectively. Mats Wilander took the top spot from Lendl for 20 weeks between 1988 and 1989, while Federer lost No. 1 ranking to Nadal for 46 weeks between 2008 and 2009. Nadal regained the No. 1 ranking in June 2010, and held it for another 56 weeks before Novak Djokovic overtook him in July 2011.