Nadal withdraws from French Open

“I think he could have played tomorrow“, said Forget.

Nine-time champion Rafael Nadal was close to tears as he was forced out of the French Open with a wrist injury. “It’s not broken, but if I keep playing it’s going to be broken in the next couple of days”. “To win the tournament, I need five more matches, and the doctor says that’s 100 per cent impossible”. Nadal, a 14-time Grand Slam title victor, has been plagued by injuries throughout his career, affecting his knees and wrist.

That would rule him out of Wimbledon and the Rio Olympics, where he is due to be Spain’s flag-bearer having not being able to fulfil the role in London four years ago because of injury.

Ramos-Vinolas, 28, had not won a match at Roland Garros since 2011 before this year. Forget also said that he wasn’t surprised by Nadal’s decision. But Nadal said he played that match only after receiving a painkilling injection in his left wrist. We take risks yesterday. He said that in the first two rounds he played with an anesthetic injection in the wrist, while MRI scans had shown that the injury was getting worse. However, defeating Djokovic would probably be the least of Nadal’s worries as the 29-year-old Spaniard now faces an uncertainty in the coming days.

He added: “Last night I started to feel more and more pain, and this morning I felt that I could not move the wrist much”.

Nadal had a chance to face Djokovic once again in the semifinals of Roland Garros, and all indications point to the former winning against the latter, considering his overwhelming victories over Groth (6-1 6-1 6-1) and Bagnis (6-3 6-0 6-3). Later Friday, defending champion and third seed Stan Wawrinka takes on Frenchman Jeremy Chardy in the last match of the day scheduled for the Philippe Chatrier Centre Court.

“It is not the end“.

“Making the decision to retire from a competition which is the most important in my career”, Nadal said, “to reach that decision you can imagine how tough it was”.

The abrupt announcement sent shock waves through Roland Garros, where Nadal has cast the longest shadow across the red clay for more than a decade, winning more singles titles here than any other player in history.

However, Wimbledon is only a month away. I and tennis fans everywhere really want him to be alright and come back ready to go at Wimbledon.

“I knew he’d been struggling”.

“Then we’re gonna do the treatment, and we hope the treatment works well”. At the moment it’s day by day.

He had been scheduled to meet Marcel Granollers in the third round before granting walkover to the fellow Spaniard who advances to last 16 against the victor between 13th-seeded Austrian Dominic Thiem and German Alexander Zverev.

Samantha Stosur is the last Australian standing at the French Open, after leading men’s hope Nick Kyrgios suffered a straight-sets flame-out at the hands of local hero Richard Gasquet.

His withdrawal also means that this year will be the first since 2003 that neither Nadal nor Roger Federer will feature in the third round of a Grand Slam.