More than ever, Nadal of flesh and blood

The trace of the previous night is still there and it is noticeable.

The next day, Rafael Nadal's nose still hurts from the racket hit that was inadvertently given during the bizarre duel of the second round in New York with Fabio Fognini, resolved by the Spaniard (2-6, 6-4, 6-2). and 6-1) after several scares.

From the outset, the game, that hour and a half in which the great champion left "one of the worst starts ever" and that seemed to be missing, or that an impostor had supplanted him;

then that nervous coming and going and to a certain point spidi, the result of the "anxiety" that he transmitted to his bench;

and to finish off an evening that he had everything, the impact of the racket and the consequent dizziness: “I thought I had broken my nose”.

The following noon, the Mallorcan still has discomfort in his nose, reddish and inflamed during the training session on Court 1 at Flushing Meadows.

That is why he feels himself carefully, again and again between series and series, and comments on it to Francis Roig, one of the three technicians who accompany him these days in New York.

Carlos Moyà and Marc López, as well as the agent Carlos Costa, the physio Rafael Maymò and the doctor Ángel Ruiz-Cotorro, the other attendees at the training session, had returned the previous morning to the downtown Manhattan hotel where the athlete and his team with bad body after all the swell.

There was waves on the runway, and also off it.

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Nadal saves a night of anxiety

When it seemed that the firecracker was over, Nadal reactivated it with a statement that was not in the script.

Asked if those "difficult months" that he has been mentioning this year and everything that drags are conditioning his game in this tournament, the tennis player responded by opening up.

“I have been through many difficult situations.

I have broken a rib, at the beginning of the year I had a bad foot, before Roland Garros my foot is destroyed, I manage to solve it more or less and I break my abdominal…”, he introduces, before referring to the delicate issue that has transpired in these last dates and that affects his most personal plot.

The Nadal of flesh and blood speaks, the permeable man, nothing of the athlete with one of the most privileged minds in history.

“As you know, on a personal level I am in a situation that is important to me.

And I have to manage everything.

As much as they came out according to what kind of information in the press about my wife's condition, she's fine, she's already letting it drop.

What happens is that they are situations that are sometimes more difficult to manage when one is away from home”, he says in reference to the news published by the

about the admission of his wife, María Francisca Perelló, in a clinic of Palma for her pregnancy.

“I was unable to pause”

As this newspaper has been able to know, the revelation has not done any grace to his environment, much less to himself, protector of his privacy throughout his career.

He did not count on it, and in the middle of the tournament the runrún, the gossips and the interpretations have ended up taking their toll.

The first day he left a set that in another circumstance surely would never have been left against Rinky Hijikata, invited by the organization, and against Fognini he had a great night's hot flash.

Nadal is treated after hitting his nose against Fognini.Frank Franklin II (AP)

“I was unable to pause in any way.

The heart rate was higher than usual, without making long points.

When I was on break I felt very fast”, he expressed, to which he added: “We have had a few difficult months with many things that we have had to handle in the way that we could”.

Beyond the Herculean competitor and the resilient one who has gone through physical episodes of all colors, of all that powerful image that he can transmit, Nadal is a sensitive young man whose events of the last year are taking their toll and eroding his spirits.

Covid, injuries, withdrawal...

Before the end of 2021, he reported that he had received the covid slap – which he contracted during a stay in Abu Dhabi in which he coincided with the king emeritus – and then his inseparable travel companion arrived: the misfortune of injuries.

First it was the fissure of the rib (March, Indian Wells), then the chronic disease of the left foot recurred (at the gates of Roland Garros) and at Wimbledon an abdominal rupture separated him from the great British in the penultimate season.

Falling and having to get up so many times has even made him consider hanging up his racket, an option ruled out today thanks to the treatment that has controlled the unbearable pain in his foot.

Too much whiplash in a narrow margin and a trend that is difficult to imagine: the most envied and analyzed psychological bunker in the history of tennis also has cracks.

Nadal, summoned this Saturday in the third round in New York with Richard Gasquet (at 1:00, Eurosport), is having a hard time.

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