Rafael Nadal, the Spanish tennis star, introduced that he had examined constructive for the coronavirus in Spain on Monday after coming back from an exhibition match in Abu Dhabi.
Nadal, a former No. 1 and one of many best gamers within the sport’s lengthy historical past, shares the boys’s report with 20 Grand Slam singles titles. However as a result of he missed a lot of the second half of the 2021 tennis season due to a continual drawback along with his left foot, he performed solely 29 matches this season.
His constructive take a look at, introduced Monday, casts doubt on whether or not he’ll return to the circuit subsequent month for the Australian Open, the primary Grand Slam match of the 12 months.
“I’m having some disagreeable moments however am relying on feeling higher little by little,” he mentioned in a post on Twitter in Spanish on Monday. He added: “As a consequence of the state of affairs, I’ve to keep up whole flexibility with my schedule, and I’ll analyze my choices relying on how my state of affairs evolves.”
Nadal mentioned he had taken a P.C.R. take a look at after returning to Spain from Abu Dhabi and was now confined to his house in Manacor on the Spanish island of Majorca. He mentioned he had knowledgeable all these with whom he had been in shut contact about his take a look at consequence, together with his spouse Maribel, his father Sebastián, his health coach Rafael Maymó and two of Nadal’s coaches: Carlos Moyà and Marc López, according to El País, a Spanish newspaper.
The listing of shut contacts additionally presumably included Nadal’s two opponents within the Abu Dhabi exhibition: Andy Murray and Denis Shapovalov, each of whom defeated Nadal.
Juan Carlos, the previous king of Spain, attended Nadal’s match with Murray on Friday and met on Saturday with Nadal and Moyà, according to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
Nadal is the newest tennis star to contract the coronavirus. No. 1 Novak Djokovic examined constructive for it in 2020. No. 2 Daniil Medvedev did so earlier this 12 months, as did Aryna Sabalenka, No. 2 within the girls’s singles rankings, and Coco Gauff, the rising American teenager who was unvaccinated on the time and was compelled to overlook the Summer time Olympics.
Not like Djokovic, who has not revealed his vaccination standing, Nadal has been an advocate for vaccination and mentioned he would adjust to the upcoming Australian Open’s choice to require gamers to be vaccinated.
“If the individuals who actually learn about it say that we must be vaccinated, who am I to create a unique opinion?” he mentioned in Abu Dhabi final week.
Nadal, ranked sixth after his abbreviated 2021 season, needed to withdraw from Wimbledon, the Summer time Olympics and United States Open this 12 months due to Müller-Weiss syndrome, a congenital foot situation that first troubled him in his teenagers however which he has lengthy been in a position to handle with customized insoles and remedy.
