I'm not going to give up on Nadal yet, we all know he's getting kind of old and injuries affect tennis players a lot since it's a one player game, but he's not the type of player to give up easily, he had his downs throughout his career and bounced back, I'm expecting him to win a couple of big tournaments before he retires, if his body doesn't bring him down, the mentality to win will always be there with El Matador.
me too - for me Nadal has always been a legend to me.
YOu are right he would not give up that easily - but that too is true -sometime the injuries are fatal and they kick off the players off their career.
Thankfully the injury this time wasn't too fatal, Nadal will soon recover and join in enlivening the next competition
But I'm wondering, Nadal has made many achievements in Tennis, he was injury prone in recent years, maybe the age reason, isn't Nadal planning to take a break from Tennis?
The age of this player from Spain has entered 37 years
knowing Nadal's mentality and how he plays in the court and how he never give up in every point, he won't let injuries and his age stop him from competing, I think Nadal will retire and rest is when his feet give up on him, he has that fighting spirit and it's something you can't teach, he still has time in my opinion to win some more.
Agreed, he's one such person who doesn't give up. The attitude is good, but when it comes to our physical fitness at some point we need to take rest and go on. To have a healthy life is really big task and not something simple. Beyond some age however we train ourselves the injuries that we got earlier will show the effects.
Regardless of the fact that Nadal is truly an example of an athlete who does not give up and fights to the end regardless of numerous injuries, he is getting older every day and will not be able to keep up with the pace of top tennis for much longer.
If he didn't have a lot of injuries that caused him to have to interrupt his tennis career several times, Andy Murray would certainly have won a lot more GS and now we would be talking about the big four of world tennis and not the big three.
Nadal will certainly be the favorite at GS in Paris this year, if he recovers from his injury, but I'm not sure how long he will be able to continue playing at the top level, maybe another year or two.
The same goes for Djokovic.
I would by no means count Murray into the tennis player category of the big three. Murray played five Australian Open finals and lost them all. He played a total of eleven finals and won only three. His win rate is about 75%. Federer's win rate is about 82%. Nadal's is 83%. Djokovic's is about 83.5%.
The difference in the win rate is massive. Getting from 75% to above 80% is not as trivia as one might think at first glance. The win rate is fair indicator because it somewhat eliminates the injury factor.
Djokovic might be better off than Nadal as he weighs less and might have had less stress on his body and in particular on his joints. Nadal is difficult to tell from here. I am sure he is going to try everything he can in order to make it to Paris in a healthy condition. Who knows, maybe that is the last French Open we will see him play. Maybe this year another year when a GOAT says goodbye.
I think where Daniel91 is coming from regarding Murray is that he was the "Best of the rest",
the #4. If any of the top 3 were not factored Murray would be there in their stead, the top 3
won so much there was little else for anyone else.
There was really a two tier field, the top 3 and then everyone else. Murray led that
second tier for a while. thats how I see it.