“That’s part of the life,” Rafael Nadal said, with a characteristically stoical shrug of his shoulders, as he announced his withdrawal from Roland Garros on Friday in front of a packed interview room at the event.
“And that’s part of my career, too.”
Nadal said he had felt gradually increasing pain in his left wrist since playing in Madrid last month. This week a doctor told him there was no way that he would be able to finish the tournament in Paris.
As Rafa put it, “It’s 100 percent impossible, because it’s gonna be 100 percent brok-ed.”
Nadal said he had played his second-round match after taking an injection that left him with no feeling in his wrist. I wonder how his opponent, Facundo Bagnis, felt hearing that; even then, he still won just six games in three sets. Of all the top seeds, Rafa seemed to have the least trouble making it to the third round. Now we know otherwise.
Listening to Rafa acknowledge the well-known fact that injuries have been “part of my career,” I thought back to the one point I could remember from the Bagnis match. It happened late, after Rafa was up two sets and a break, at a stage when he theoretically should have been in cruise control.