Over the first 10 days of 2017, we're examining the Top 10 players on the ATP and WTA tours—how will they fare during the new season? All of the previews can be found here.
As he begins his first full season as a 30-year-old, Rafael Nadal looms as the biggest question mark in the ATP’s Top 10. The 14-time major champion is obviously not the player he used to be; since winning the French Open in 2014, he has failed to reach the semifinals at a Slam in eight tries. Last year a wrist injury sidelined him during the summer and forced him to pull the plug on his season a month early. More concerning, though, has been the decline of his once-indomitable mental strength. As the years have gone by, Rafa has increasingly struggled to keep his nerves down and his confidence up.
Nadal’s 2016 contained reasons for hope and discouragement in roughly equal measures.
His record at the majors was just 6-3. He suffered surprise losses to lower-ranked players like Fernando Verdasco, Pablo Cuevas, Borna Coric, Lucas Pouille, Grigor Dimitrov and Viktor Troicki. And in crucial moments at the Olympics and the U.S. Open, Nadal was unable to find a healthy balance between aggression and safety; he would be tentative one minute, and suicidally aggressive the next, with nothing in between.