After the abdominal injury suffered at Wimbledon, Rafael Nadal returned to the track at the Cincinnati Masters 1000. The Spanish champion was unable to overcome Borna Coric in his debut match and prematurely left the last major tournament before the US Open.
The Spaniard will therefore arrive in New York having played only one match on American cement. An event that Nadal has shown he can turn into positive energy on more than one occasion. “Obviously it wasn’t my best match, but I guess it can happen as I haven’t played an official match for a long time,” the 22-time Grand Slam winner explained at the press conference.
“US Open? I’ll have to activate the ‘Slam Mode’ as usual. I will have to overcome this defeat and come out stronger. I know what you have to do to get to the best in New York, here I was able to train in a certain way, in the next two weeks the level of intensity will be completely different.
However, the next few days will be very important for me.”
Nadal is 19-0 in Grand Slams this year
A fully fit Rafael Nadal will be dangerous at the US Open despite his stuttering return to action at the Western & Southern Open, according to tennis analyst Barbara Schett.
“Don’t forget that was his first match since that injury,” she said on Eurosport. “The match is always different from practice. And whoever had an abdominal injury and a tear on the abdominal muscles knows how it feels.
You have to be extremely cautious. You’re worried that you’re going to reinjure it again. And I think that’s what we’ve seen on Wednesday. When he played against Coric, he was a little bit uncertain how the body was going to hold up.
And for sure he’s going to feel better and better. If there’s no damage to the abdominal muscle, then he still has a week and a half to improve his health, to improve the trust also that he can extend and he can’t bend on the serve because that’s the trickiest shot, the serve and the smash.
When that is the case, Rafa Nadal certainly can be dangerous again at the US Open. I mean, he’s so fired up at every single Grand Slam. We’ve seen this year playing the best tennis of his life. You can never, ever write him off”.
Notably, last year the total prize money was around $57.5 million. This year, they have increased it to $60 million, which will be massive for the players, particularly for the qualifiers and first-round players.
