Spanish legend Rafael Nadal is set to return to tennis at an ATP 250 event in Doha in February after making a surprise appearance on the entry list. If fit, Nadal could face the likes of Daniil Medvedev, Andrey Rublev and Andy Murray in Qatar as he looks to build form and fitness ahead of his favoured clay-court swing and the hunt for a record-extending 15th Roland-Garros crown.
Rafael Nadal looks set to make a speedy return from injury after being named on the entry list for the 2024 Qatar Open.
The 22-time Grand Slam champion returned in Brisbane after almost 12 months on the sidelines, but picked up a separate muscle issue in his hip during defeat to Jordan Thompson in the quarter-finals.
He opted to withdraw from the Australian Open, where he is a two-time champion, after saying he was “not ready to compete at the maximum level” in five-set matches.
It sparked fears he could be set for another long spell on the sidelines, but those concerns may be unfounded after the Spaniard appeared on the entry list for the ATP 250 tournament in Doha, which begins on February 19.
After Nadal pulled out of the Australian Open, Eurosport expert Mats Wilander said it was “unfair” he had faced so many long injury battles.
“We’ve been woken up all the time by rough injuries on others, but the injury that he has now, when you hear the description of it – micro, I mean the injuries he gets and has gotten are so different from other players,” Wilander said earlier in January.
“You just realise that it’s not just his ankle and his knee and the big part of his muscle, it’s also the smaller muscles in his body.
“Either he’s trained so hard over the years, or he tries so hard over the years that he breaks. And it’s so unusual. It is unfair to someone like Rafa Nadal, because he’s got the spirit that very few professional athletes have had over the years, and no one, I think, gets the people so emotionally involved in his tennis or the sport they’re doing.
“So he’s a player that has had seasons. His season has very rarely lasted the whole year. We’ve gotten used to him coming back and doing the non-human thing, of coming back from injury time and time and time again, and maybe now at 37 years old, maybe this is the last time that he was able to come back.”
Daniil Medvedev, Andrey Rublev and Andy Murray are among the other names in a tasty men’s field in Doha.
