After almost a year off the court due to injury, the Spanish tennis player revealed that he will return in Brisbane
The Spaniard has only 45 points in the ATP ranking, although he will be able to face the first tournaments with a better situation
Rafael Nadal announced this past Friday the most anticipated news in the world of tennis. The Spaniard revealed that his return to the competition will be a fact in the Brisbane tournament, in the first week of competition of the season (December 31-January 7). Almost a year after his last gameJanuary 18 at the Australian Open, Nadal will be back, although with an unprecedented ranking in his career.
With only the 45 points from Australia’s second roundthe tennis player from Manacor will face the Brisbane event in the position 663 in the ATP ranking. A situation that a priori would not allow him to compete in any ATP category tournament, although his long injury opens two avenues for him to compete.
One option is to receive invitationswhich surely they will not miss, because all the tournaments will want to have Nadal in which he can be the last year of his sporting career.
The other option is to take advantage of the protected ranking. This option works in the following way: in order to join it you must bring six months without competing due to injury. By taking advantage of this protection, the ATP will allow the tennis player to enter the nine next tournaments -or twelve, in case of not playing for a year-, with the average of the ranking of the three months after the last event played. For Rafa Nadal this will mean that she will be able to enter tournaments as number 9 in the world. However, this has a counterpart and that is that does not allow entering tournaments as seeded.
Nadal himself assured that he prefers the option of entering with a protected ranking, thus giving other tennis players the possibility of receiving the invitation. “If I can play with a protected ranking so as not to take away invitations from others, the better.”
With the possibility of playing nine tournaments, Nadal would have enough time to recover a good position and you may not even need to use up all the credit if you do well in the first few events.
The Olympic Games, another story
The presence in Paris next summer It’s not going to be a problem for Nadal either. If he can be at the event, if his physique allows it and the player so wishes, the Balearic tennis player will also have different options to attend the event.
take advantage of the long injury It could help you so that the ITF, the International Tennis Federation, will send you an invitation. Also by the way stipulated “commitment and achievements in the Olympic Tennis Event and/or Davis Cup or Billie Jean King Cup”, for which Nadal would be invited without problems thanks to his extensive list of merits.