Chris Almeida: So here we are on the first Wednesday of the Australian Open and Rafa Nadal, who won the tournament last year, is out. He lost 6-4, 6-4, 7-5 to McKenzie MacDonald who, if I’m being totally honest, I’ve never heard of before. But this is not really out of nowhere. We knew coming in that kind of early exit was a possibility.
Coming into this event, Nadal was going through perhaps the worst stretch of tennis in his entire career. So we weren’t expecting him necessarily to be in the final or to win the tournament, but still, seeing him lose in the second round in straight sets is always a little surprising. The obvious thing we need to talk about here is that this loss was largely the result of a hip injury that caused him a lot of trouble. That is the most recent in a very long list of injuries that have troubled him. The foot, the knee, the rib… Jon, you’ve been talking now for a little while about how you think he might not be long for the tour. He hasn’t announced anything yet. You have to imagine he’s going to at least try to stick it out through the French Open but this does make it feel like we are rapidly approaching the end.
Nadal waves to fans after being upset in the second round at the Australian Open.
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Jon Wertheim: Yeah, that was the pity of it. This is the defending champion and the guy who’s won two majors within the last year. But he’s clearly diminished. This was his seventh loss in nine matches! He looks very different from the player that he was a year ago. It’s clearly physical. I mean since winning the French Open he’s been really diminished and really compromised physically. And this is a new kind of injury… I mean all credit to Mack McDonald. He’s been overshadowed by some of the more higher rank Americans but he’s a nice player, he was a good college player at UCLA, and is a solid pro. But he and Nadal played once before and he didn’t win a set. So this was not the Nadal that won the title last year.
He’s 36 and will be 37 during the French Open. He’s a new father. He knows rehab has a price. Does he want to go through… we don’t know how serious this injury is, but it’s not a familiar injury, which I think is part of this too. Nadal knows what it takes to get his back right. Or he knows what it takes to manage his feet. But a hip injury is no joke in this sport at 36 and a half.
CA: The other night, we saw Andy Murray pull out a big win in that five-setter against Matteo Berrettini. That’s the biggest win he’s had in years. This is a player who was once in multiple major finals every year. And he’s had such a long road back to the point of just challenging seeded opponents why? Because of a hip injury! And I mean, God bless him, but he’s fought for a long time to work up to these moral victories. You have to think if you’re someone like Nadal, whose family wants him to hang it up, maybe that kind of grind is not worth it.
JW: You never want an athlete to retire. You never tell them to retire. But I do think it’s fair to wonder how greats are going to manage their careers as they get older. Nadal gets asked about this all the time and understandably does not like getting asked about this all the time, but there was a sense last night that we might have seen his last Australian Open match.
