Nadal rests on his foot and says goodbye to Rome

Sitting on the bench, Rafael Nadal stares at the ground, leaning on his knees and resigned to that old evil that returns to punish him and does not leave him.

Again the foot, the damn foot.

That old demon.

He returned the pain and the restlessness, the questions, the doubts.

The

most unwanted

With just over a week to go before Roland Garros begins, the 21-time champion is once again facing a race against the clock.

Little matters in this case the defeat against Denis Shapovalov in the round of 16 in Rome (1-6, 7-5 and 6-2, in 2h 36m).

The Foro Italico falls silent and covers the Spanish, who in recent times has been reunited with his worst enemy.

In March it was the rib that stopped him for a month and a half, and now, at the gates of landing in Paris, his Eden, it is the foot that threatens.

“It always hurts.

It's part of my day to day and even more so when I play long games.

I have a chronic and incurable injury ”, he recalled last week in Madrid, when there was already the odd warning.

“I am not injured, I am a player who lives with an injury”, he clarified this Thursday, already at night at the Foro Italico.

“It is my day to day.

It's hard, really... and sometimes it's hard for me to accept it.

It hurt me a lot”, continued the man from Manacor, who the previous day had managed to control the damage at the intersection against John Isner.

Not against Shapovalov.

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And that everything had begun to ask for mouth, mending the bad start of the previous day;

dictating and ordering in front of the young Canadian, the last southpaw who had managed to beat him.

It was five years ago, in Montreal;

since then, 23 consecutive wins against rivals of the same profile, one after another, in a chain.

Everything was going from fable until the adversary put one more pinion, rebelled and hardened the pulse.

Spare from the serve, the talented blond who had already caused him headaches last year –two match points in the round of 16– and this year in Australia –heat stroke, and from 2-0 to the fifth set, to the limit physical – got up.

Shapovalov (23 years old, 16th in the world) won 16 of the last 19 points at stake, when Nadal had already chosen to contain himself completely and avoid a greater evil, remembering the old ghosts.

A little over a year ago, at Roland Garros, his foot hammered him again and deprived him of the rest of the season.

Neither Wimbledon, nor the Tokyo Games, nor the US Open nor the Masters Cup.

He underwent a "slightly aggressive treatment" in Barcelona, ​​in September, and under the supervision of Dr. Ángel Ruiz Cotorro he managed to return and perform at the highest level.

Then came the rib mishap at Indian Wells, and in Rome the foot mishap is reproduced again.

Another dry stop.

Obvious limp

Shapovalov offers no respite or respite, a disconcerting tennis player who comes and goes, polyhedral, with a

profile ;

as soon as he produces something great as he makes the most outrageous mistake, it inflates as it deflates, rising and falling constantly throughout the matches.

It's a coin toss.

In any case, the Canadian – quoted with Casper Ruud – demands to be permanently alert and does not allow his guard to drop for a second.

Nadal did it a couple of times – intemperate start of the second set and just off the foot in the resolution of that sleeve – and he paid dearly.

Everything had started smoothly, but it turned badly.

Again, the blessed scaphoid.

“No, it has not been in any movement.

It's there all the time”, pointed out the number four, who will arrive at the Bois de Boulogne in an unprecedented situation, without having played any final of the three Masters 1000 on clay, Monte Carlo, Madrid and Rome.

“Sometimes it hurts more and sometimes less.

Today was crazy.

I would like to talk about tennis, but it is what it is.

Let's see what happens in the next two days or during this week.

Since I came back [in January, after more than half a year in the reserves] it has been tough.

It is difficult to be able to train well several days in a row, sometimes I cannot do it, ”he expanded.

The Balearic had shown some discomfort in a couple of supports, but in that last game, when the

had been exchanged and he had managed to cut the lost ground at the beginning of the sleeve, from 0-3 to 4-4, he definitely suffered of the foot and the scene changed completely.

It got very ugly for him, and he tried to hide the gesture and continued gritting his teeth, but in the end he couldn't help it.

The limp was evident.

After a race he took a first break, and the next he had no choice but to stop and lean on a support, in a break of three or four seconds that seemed like a thousand.

He was no longer playing in Rome.

His mind was in Paris.

From then on, with the game broken, he devoted himself to dosing and keeping up the type, exemplary in attitude and resigned to his fate.

Despite the whipping of the foot, he did not give up.

He didn't quit.

The Roman stands thanked him for the effort, but the final stretch resulted in a sad outcome that sets off the alarm light ahead of Roland Garros.

The great French begins in 10 days and the endemic disease of the scaphoid appears again.

It is, for the umpteenth time, Nadal against time, pending the clock and pain.

He had controlled it until now, but in the Caja Mágica he knocked on the door a couple of times.

He does it in Rome with more force and the immediate future becomes unknown.

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