Rafael Nadal has pulled out of the Dubai Tennis Championships and Qatar Open with fears growing that he will not be fit enough to compete in the Indian Wells Masters event next month. The Spaniard has not played since he was knocked out of the Australian Open in the second round by MacKenzie McDonald while suffering from an abdomen injury.
Nadal’s season got off to a less-than-ideal start as he suffered an early exit in the first Grand Slam of the year. He has not returned to the court since, with an abdomen tear ruling him out for six to eight weeks.
He has now pulled out of the two scheduled events in Dubai and Qatar with the issue yet to be healed. The Dubai Tennis Championships take place at the same time as the Mexican Open which Nadal won last year meaning he could plummet down the world rankings as he will lose 500 points.
He is in a race against time to take part in the first masters’ event of the year, which gets underway in Indian Wells on March 5. Nadal finished second in the competition last year after losing in the final to American Taylor Fritz. The tournament takes on extra importance as a result, with the 22-time major defending another 600 ranking points as he looks to prevent falling further down the standings with his place in the top 10 increasingly under risk.
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“Obviously the one problem being that he still cannot come to the US,” he said last month. “If he doesn’t play Indian Wells and Miami in March, it will be tough, they’re supposed to lift those mandates by mid-April.
“It would be nice to see if we could maybe lift those a little earlier and have him come to play Indian Wells and Miami. I think he wants to play, so we should give him the chance. Hopefully we can have him there. I mean, it would be a disgrace in my eyes if he wasn’t coming to these events, or not allowed to come.”
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