Melbourne, Australia – Rafael Nadal lowered her head during changes and rested her elbows on her knees, the very picture of resignation.
What was already a poor start to 2023, after a year marked by all sorts of health issues, hit a low point at the Australian Open on Wednesday.
Defending champion and seeded No. 1 at Melbourne Park, Nadal injured his left hip and lost to mackenzie mcdonald 6-4, 6-4, 7-5 in the second round, abruptly ending his bid for a record 23rd Grand Slam trophy.
βIt’s a difficult moment. It’s a tough day,β said Nadal, a 36-year-old Spaniard. “I can’t say I’m not mentally destroyed right now because I would be lying.”
He stopped awkwardly at the end of a point at the end of the second set against McDonald, 65th in the standings.
Nadal was visited by a coach on the sidelines and then left the pitch for a medical time-out. In the stands, his wife wiped away tears. Nadal returned to action but was clearly compromised and not tireless as usual, later claiming he couldn’t hit his backhand properly and couldn’t run much either.
But Nadal added that as the defending tournament champion he didn’t want to leave the pitch via a mid-game retirement.
AUSTRALIAN OPEN DRAWINGS: Women | Men
Always a pleasure, @Rafael Nadal π«Ά#AusOpen β’ #AO2023 pic.twitter.com/CdnOMzYDK0
β #AusOpen (@AusOpen) January 18, 2023
He said the hip had been bothering him for a few days, but it had never been worse than Wednesday. Nadal was unsure of the exact nature of the injury, saying he would undergo medical tests to determine if it had to do with muscle, joint or cartilage.
“It’s never over until it’s over.” He didn’t even want to turn around and give up. He kept fighting until the end, even though maybe he didn’t have his full game,β said McDonald, a 27-year-old American who won the NCAA singles and doubles championships for UCLA. in 2016.
“I was in the locker room,” McDonald said of the aftermath of the match, “and I was like, ‘Hey, this is really, really important to me, because I’ve never beaten anyone from this caliber. “”
This is Nadal’s first Grand Slam outing since retiring in the first round in Melbourne in 2016 against No.45 Fernando Verdasco. It also made Verdasco the lowest-ranked player to beat Nadal in Australia β until, of course, McDonald’s on Wednesday.
McDonald has never made it past the fourth round of a major tournament. In his only previous clash against Nadal, at the 2020 French Open, McDonald won just a total of four matches in a lopsided loss.
“He kicked my ass,” McDonald recalled Wednesday.
That result eclipsed anything in Melbourne, of course, on a day when persistent rain delayed the start of play on all but the three courts with retractable roofs until after 5 p.m. local time.
This meant that some players β notably the No 1 Iga SwiatekNo. 3 Jessica Pegula and No. 6 Maria Sakkari β won games that put them in the third round before more than a dozen others had even contested a single point in the first round. At night, an 18-year-old American Coco Gauff won the title of champion of the US Open 2021 Emma Raducanu 6-3, 7-6 (4) in the second round,
The men joining McDonald’s in the third round included a fellow American Frances Tiafoewho is seeded 16th and No. 15 Jannik Sinner from Italy.
“I said to him, ‘You’re going to be able to win today. You can win today,β Tiafoe said of McDonald’s. “Kind of, seeing how he feels, I’m happy for Mackie. ‘GOAT wins’ doesn’t come easy. Something to say to his grandkids one day, and you have to be happy for this guy.
A year ago, Nadal won the Australian Open for the second time to claim his 21st major championship, then took his tally to 22 – the most for a man – at Roland Garros.
He is currently ranked No. 2 but was the top seed at Melbourne Park as No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz misses the Australian Open with a bad leg.
Nadal’s body has betrayed him a bit recently.
He needed painkiller injections for his left foot before winning the French Open last June, withdrew from Wimbledon last July before the semi-finals due to a torn abdominal muscle and also treated a costal cartilage problem in 2022.
Nadal’s exit drains the tournament of even more star power. In addition to his absence and that of Alcaraz, vice-champion of Wimbledon 2022 Nick Kyrgios retired because his left knee needs arthroscopic surgery, four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka is off tour while pregnant, two-time major champion Simona Halep is serving a provisional doping ban and Venus Williams is hurt.
It all adds up: the 2023 edition of the Australian Open is the first Grand Slam tournament since Serena Williams and Roger Federer announced their retirement.
Nadal arrived in Melbourne 0-2 this season, making him 1-6 since September, when he lost to Tiafoe in the fourth round of the US Open.
Even in a first-round victory on Monday, a four-set against a cramp jack draper, Nadal never really seemed to be at his best chasing every ball, putting every high-velocity shot on target. He looked, somehow, his age.
It was the same from the start against McDonald’s.
βI’m really happy with the way I started this match. I thought I was playing really well, serving well and returning well too,β McDonald said. “So I was really bringing it to him.”
That is true. Right off the bat McDonald was on, Nadal was off.
The very first game served as a harbinger: McDonald took a 1-0 lead thanks to a trio of unforced errors from Nadal – two from his fearsome left side.
In a bad mood, Nadal had a back and forth with the chair umpire Marijana Veljovic during breaks in action to find out if she was starting the service clock between points too quickly for her liking.
Soon McDonald’s was up a set. Then he went up a station wagon right away in the second.
After a point in this set, Nadal showed real signs of struggling. He crouched down behind the baseline and put his racquet down on the court. Then he approached and leaned on a sign, prompting Veljovic to ask if Nadal was okay.
Nadal watched a few serves from McDonald’s racquet go past him, then was checked by the coach. While the match would continue, it was essentially over on the spot.
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