{"id":62568,"date":"2024-01-07T06:31:29","date_gmt":"2024-01-07T11:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=62568"},"modified":"2024-01-07T06:32:00","modified_gmt":"2024-01-07T11:32:00","slug":"rafael-nadal-australian-open-hip-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2024\/01\/07\/rafael-nadal-australian-open-hip-injury\/","title":{"rendered":"Rafael Nadal out of Australian Open with hip injury"},"content":{"rendered":"

22-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal will miss the first Major of the season after picking up a hip injury at the ATP Brisbane International . It is a blow to the Spaniard, who was making his return to the tour after the better part of a year on the sidelines in Queensland. He reached the quarterfinals, beating Dominic Thiem in his opener and Jason Kubler before losing to Jordan Thompson in three sets.<\/p>\n

Nadal revealed that he had noticed the injury in Brisbane before travelling to Melbourne where an MRI revealed that he had suffered a micro-tear. In a post on Twitter, Nadal said that this would prevent him from competing \u2018at the maximum level of exigence in 5 sets matches<\/a>\u2019, leading to his decision to withdraw from the Australian Open.<\/p>\n

His withdrawal will be a bitter disappointment to his many fans, with this likely to be his last season on the tour. Although Nadal was not amongst the favourites to win a third title at Melbourne Park, he had enjoyed several good runs in Australia after returning from a lengthy injury layoff, including in 2017 when he contested a memorable final against Roger Federer.<\/p>\n

Nadal has not yet given a timeline for his return to action, though in his statement he noted that he and his team remain positive for the \u2018evolution of the season<\/a>\u2019. How quickly he is able to return to the court will likely depend on whether he requires surgery to address the tear. If it does turn out to be only a \u2018micro-tear\u2019 he should be able to avoid surgery and Nadal could feasibly return to action by February, possibly in time for the Golden Swing in South America.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, attention turns to the first Grand Slam of the season in Melbourne, where Novak Djokovic will be in search of what would be a record-breaking 25th<\/sup> Grand Slam and his 11th<\/sup> title at the Australian Open. Defending champion Aryna Sabalenka, meanwhile, will be looking to carve out a legacy of her own in Australia, though she will doubtless face stiff competition from the likes of Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff and Elena Rybakina.<\/p>\n

Main photo credit:\u00a0Mike Frey-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

22-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal will miss the first Major of the season after picking up a hip injury at the ATP Brisbane International . It is a blow to the Spaniard, who was making his return to the tour after the better part of a year on the sidelines in Queensland. He reached […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2815,"featured_media":62569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atp"],"modified_by":"Jim Smith","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2815"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}