Rafael Nadal withdraws from Wimbledon semifinal vs. Nick Kyrgios with injury
Rafael Nadal has withdrawn from his Wimbledon semifinal match versus Nick Kyrgios with an abdominal tear.
Nadal announced the decision in a news conference Thursday. Kyrgios will advance to the Wimbledon championship match in a walkover.
"Unfortunately, as you can imagine, if I am here, I have to pull out from the tournament," Nadal said. "As everybody saw yesterday, I had been suffering with pain in the abdominal. I was not OK there, as yesterday I said. That's confirmed. I have a tear in the muscle in the abdominal. ...
"I was thinking during the whole day about the decision to make. ... It's obvious that if I keep going the injury's gonna be worse and worse. That's the thing I can say now and feel very sad to say that."
Nadal added that the abdominal injury prevents him from performing his "normal movement" during a serve and that he didn't believe he could win two more matches playing through the injury.
"For respect to myself in some way, I don't want to go out there and not be competitive enough to play at the level that I need to play to achieve my goal."
Nadal's withdrawal ends his quest for a calendar Grand Slam. He entered play at Wimbledon having won the the Australian Open and the French Open. It also prevents Nadal from extending his lead as the all-time winningest man in Grand Slam history. Nadal's 22 Grand Slam wins are two more than Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, who claim 20 each.
Djokovic — the tournament's No. 1 seed — will play No. 9 seed Briton Cameron Norrie in the semifinal round on Friday. The winner will advance to face Kyrgios in the final.
Nadal played through pain in quarterfinal win
Nadal, 36, advanced to the semifinals via a five-set win over American Taylor Fritz on Wednesday. He played through the lingering abdominal injury during the match and required a medical timeout to take anti-inflammatories. His father Sebastian appeared to call for Nadal to retire from the match from the stands because of the injury.
Sebastian Nadal telling his son Rafael to quit? #Wimbledon#Nadalpic.twitter.com/L0LiJQQttY
— Simon Häring (@_shaering) July 6, 2022
He remained on the court to win 3-6, 7-5, 3-6, 7-5, 7-6 (10-4). He said after the quarterfinal win that he had thoughts during the match that he might not be able to finish it.
Nadal confirmed that he had dealt with the injury during the last week but that it intensified on Wednesday.
"Yesterday was the worst day," Nadal continued. "I was, honestly during the week — I did tests to see how things evolved. It was obvious that yesterday after the match that the very small thing that I had days ago increased."
He added that he expected the injury to sideline him from competing for 3-4 weeks.
"I hope these three, four weeks will allow me to do my normal calendar," Nadal said.
The US Open — the final Grand Slam of the year — is scheduled to start on Aug. 29. Nadal has won Wimbledon twice (2008, '10) and is a four-time winner at the US Open (2010, '13, '17, '19).
