Rafael Nadal is sure he\u2019ll be returning to competition after missing nearly all of 2023 with a hip injury that required surgery. And now he says he\u2019ll be revealing his comeback plans soon. Nadal wrote Thursday on social media: \u201cI confirmed yesterday I\u2019ll be back\u201d and punctuated that message with a smiling emoji. \u201cStay tuned,\u201d he continued in the Instagram post, which included a photograph of him about to hit a backhand. He said that in the coming days, he will \u201cdecide and announce with my team when and where\u201d everyone can expect to see him in action.<\/p>\n
The next season begins in late December, with the year\u2019s first major tournament, the Australian Open, scheduled to begin main-draw matches on January 14. \u201cFor the world of tennis, no doubt that it\u2019s amazing news that he\u2019ll be back,\u201d Novak Djokovic said at the ATP Finals in Turin, Italy. Nadal, whose 22 Grand Slam singles titles rank second to Djokovic\u2019s 24 for the most among men, has not played on tour since last January when he hurt his hip flexor during a loss to Mackenzie McDonald in the second round of the Australian Open.<\/p>\n
In May, a little more than a week before the start of his beloved French Open, Nadal announced that he would miss the tournament he\u2019s won a record 14 times and wasn\u2019t exactly sure when he might return to play. He said then he hoped to compete in 2024, which he expected to be his final season. \u201cYou never know how things will turn out,\u201d Nadal said at a news conference at the time, \u201cbut my intention is that next year will be my last year.\u201d He wound up having arthroscopic surgery in June in Barcelona. Dating to the end of 2022, the 37-year-old Spanish left-hander has lost seven of his past nine matches, including going 1-3 this season.<\/p>\n
With Roger Federer, who won 20 majors, having announced his retirement in 2022, and Nadal missing much of this year, Djokovic was the only member of the so-called Big Three of men\u2019s tennis who was active throughout 2023 \u2013 and the 36-year-old from Serbia was dominant, particularly at the Grand Slam tournaments. He won the Australian Open, French Open and US Open and reached the final at Wimbledon. \u201cI think it would be nice for the sport to have at least one more match between Nadal and me. That\u2019s the biggest rivalry in terms of the amount of matches played that this sport ever had. Hopefully that can happen,\u201d Djokovic said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a big warrior. He\u2019s somebody that really never gives up. With all the injuries that he had, keeps going. That\u2019s definitely something that you have to respect and admire about him and his spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rafael Nadal is sure he\u2019ll be returning to competition after missing nearly all of 2023 with a hip injury that\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":11556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[3190,2897,3348,2806,2824],"class_list":["post-11555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-atp","tag-injury","tag-rafael-nadal","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}