PARIS: Rafael Nadal’s predicament in a nutshell – the spirit is willing, but the feet are protesting.
The Spaniard – owner of 14 French Open crowns and 22 Grand Slam titles – suffers from Mueller-Weiss syndrome, a degenerative condition that affects bones in the feet. The 36-year-old has needed injections (nerve blocks) on his left foot, two shots before each of his seven matches, along with anti-inflammatories to keep him running this past fortnight at Roland Garros where he extended his record of records.
Nadal, who is halfway to a calendar Slam, having won the Australian and French Opens in the same year for the first time in his career, will pay a visit to his doctor – looking for ‘long-term’ relief for his left foot.
TOWERING OVER ALL: Rafael Nadal during a photo call on the Alexandre III bridge in front of the Eiffel Tower on Monday
“I have been playing with injections on the nerves to sleep the foot, that’s why I was able to play during these two weeks,” the world No. 4 said of the nerve blocks that helped him compete this fortnight after he hobbled out of the draw in Rome. Nadal was fortunate to get away with numbing the pain on his foot as the option raised the possibility of a more serious injury.
“Everybody knows how much this tournament means to me, I wanted to keep trying and give myself a chance here,” Nadal said, adding, “But it’s obvious that I can’t keep competing with the foot asleep.”
The injections gave the 22-time major champion temporary relief, up to a few hours at a time, but Nadal wants a solution, even if it’s only a temporary, long-term fix.
“I will have to take a Radiofrequency injection on the nerve, to burn the nerve and create the impact that I have now on the nerve for a long period of time,” Nadal explained.
The Radiofrequency Ablation (RFA) procedure, a minimally invasive technique, is a one-sitting treatment. It can hold for up to two years. In some cases, 12 months after the procedure possibly, the burnt nerve regrows. Someone like Nadal, for whom nerve blocks have been effective, the chances of the Radiofrequency Ablation working, is as high as 90 percent.
“If this works, I gonna keep going. If not, then gonna be another story,” Nadal said. “I then have to ask myself if I’m ready to do a major (surgery) without being sure that things are going the proper way. A major surgery that don’t guarantee me to be competitive again.”
“I’m going to be at Wimbledon if my body is ready to be at Wimbledon,” Nadal said, addressing the prospect of competing again in three weeks. “Wimbledon is not a tournament that I want to miss. I had a lot of success there. So, if you ask me if I will be in Wimbledon, I can’t give you a clear answer. If I want to win Wimbledon, of course!” That’s that then, at least for now, the retirement talk has been laid to rest.
Late on Saturday, about the time France‘s meteorological bureau issued orange alerts for storms, urging the population to be vigilant, the tennis world appeared to be caught in a whirl of a different nature. Was Sunday’s outing Rafa Nadal’s last dance on a rectangle?
It might’ve started with a Nadal press conference in the lead-up to his quarterfinal meeting with Novak Djokovic. “Every match I play here, I don’t know if it gonna be my last,” he said.
In his post-championship media interaction Nadal cleared the air. “As I said in the past, me, Roger, Novak, we achieved things that probably we never expected,” he said, “What keeps me going is not this competition, it’s the passion for the game and moments that stays inside me forever. To play in front of the best crowds in the world and the best stadiums. That drives me. It is not about a goal to win more titles. It’s about a goal, the goal to give myself a chance to keep doing what I like to do,” he argued.
