Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal said that he hasn’t suffered much of late due to his chronic foot injury and is ready to perform in the upcoming Wimbledon edition. After the veteran won the French Open earlier this month, he said that the injury had taken quite a bit of a toll on him.
Earlier, the legendary John McEnroe also said that he was surprised to see the 36-year-old Nadal win matches with his injury. Ahead of the grass-court tournament, starting Monday, June 27, the Manacor-born Nadal said that he’s a lot better physically than he was before.
“[I am] quite happy about how [it has] evolved. First of all, I can walk normal most of the days, almost every single day. That’s for me the main issue. When I wake up, I don’t have this pain that I was having for the last year and a half, so quite happy about that,” Nadal was quoted as saying to the reporters.
“And second thing, practising. I have been overall better, honestly. Since the last two weeks, I didn’t have not one day of these terrible days that I can’t move at all… The feeling and overall feelings are positive, because I am in a positive way in terms of pain, and that’s the main thing,” he stated.
“Of course, the treatment that I did didn’t fix my injury, not improving my injury at all, but can take out a little bit the pain. That’s the main goal. Honestly, I feel happy because the toughest thing is when you have too much pain — not playing tennis,” Nadal added.
Nadal is set to take part in Wimbledon as the No.2 seed and will face 23-year-old Argentinean Francisco Cerundolo in the Round of 32 match on Court 1. Out of his 22 titles so far, Nadal has won two of them at Wimbledon.
Back in 2008, Nadal defeated Roger Federer in the final, after which he got the better of Czech Republic’s Thomas Berdych.