'I will do my best' - Rafael Nadal 'striving' to be ready for start of clay season after injury troubles

ByJames Walker-Roberts

Published 20/03/2024 at 23:07 GMT

Rafael Nadal's start to the 2024 season has not gone as planned as he has played just three matches. The 37-year-old is "striving" to be fit for the start of the clay season but admits it is "difficult to make predictions" at the moment. Nadal also says "the first objective is to try to compete and I'm going day by day". Nadal is on the entry list for the Monte Carlo Masters.

Rafael Nadal insists he will do his “best” to be ready to return for the clay season, but is wary about making predictions after a difficult start to the year.

Nadal, 37, made his comeback in Brisbane in January after missing almost all of 2023 with injury.

There were initial positive signs as he won two matches, but then he suffered a muscle injury in the quarter-finals and hasn’t played since.

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He missed the Australian Open and then pulled out of Indian Wells, saying he wasn’t “ready to play at the highest level at such an important event”.

The focus is now on getting ready for the clay swing, which starts in early April and culminates with the French Open.

"I will do my best to try to start the clay season, which is my goal,” said 22-time Grand Slam champion Nadal .

“I am working for that and striving for that goal, but I don't dare to say anything about what might happen because lately it has been difficult for me to make predictions, unfortunately.

“I've not stopped training at any time. I'm trying all the time. I feel fine, I just haven't managed to follow the schedule I would have liked to. Hopefully things can change, but as you can imagine I can't say because I don't know myself.”

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Nadal is on the entry list for the Monte Carlo Masters, which is the first big event of the clay season and starts on April 7.

However, there still appears little certainty over Nadal’s fitness ahead of the tour switching to his favourite surface.

"It doesn't matter whether I'm optimistic or not; I'm a realist. For the last year and a half or two it's been impossible for me to compete, so the first objective is to try to compete and I'm going day by day," he said.

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"If I had to be optimistic or negative, I probably wouldn't even be trying. It's a long time, I have a lot years and a very long career behind me. At the end of the day I try not to be one thing or the other, I try to go day by day, do the work I have to do to give myself opportunities and we'll see how long we can try."

Reflecting on his decision to pull out of Indian Wells, Nadal added: “The reality is that I didn't feel ready to start playing a tournament at this level, with the little training background I had behind me at the level I needed.

"I didn't want to start a tournament coming from where I came from, with no guarantee of being able to advance to at least the levels that I think I need to demand of myself to try and start a tournament."

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