WIMBLEDON, England (AP) — Rafael Nadal withdrew from Wimbledon with a torn abdominal muscle Thursday, a day before he plays Nick Kyrgios in the semifinals.
It is the first time since 1931 that a man has withdrawn from the oldest Grand Slam tournament before a semi-final or final.
“I made my decision because I believe I cannot win two matches in these circumstances,” Nadal told a press conference at the All England Club. “I cannot serve. Not only that I can’t serve at the right speed, but that I can’t make the normal movement to serve.”
The 22-time major champion sighed occasionally as he answered questions in English, then Spanish, for a total of more than 20 minutes. He twice described himself as “very sad”.
Nadal said trying to continue competing could make the injury worse.
The only other time in his career that Nadal has thwarted an opponent by withdrawing from a Grand Slam before a match was at the 2016 French Open, when he withdrew before the third round due to an injured left wrist.
Kyrgios, 40, a 27-year-old from Australia, reached his first major title match and became the first unseeded men’s finalist at Wimbledon since Mark Philippoussis, who lost to Roger Federer in 2003.
Kyrgios will meet either three-time defending champion and No. 1 Novak Djokovic or No. 9 Cam Norrie of Great Britain for the championship on Sunday; their semi-final will be played on Friday.
Second-seeded Nadal, 36, of Spain, is 19-0 in Grand Slams in 2022, including trophies at the Australian Open in January and the French Open in June. That put him halfway to a calendar-year Grand Slam for the first time in his career.
Nadal has been troubled by a stomach muscle for about a week and the pain became almost unbearable in the first set of his 4-hour, 21-minute fifth-set tiebreak victory over Taylor Fritz in the quarterfinals on Wednesday.
After that match, Nadal said he considered stopping before it was over – and he couldn’t be sure if he would feel well enough to play again on Friday.
He wore two strips of athletic tape on his lower stomach and took a medical break to take pain pills; his father and sister waved from the stands for him to quit.
On the day off on Thursday, Nadal went to the All England Club for a light workout. He was officially scheduled to train on one of the competition courts, but did not show up, instead opting for training courts that were not accessible to fans.
Satisfied mostly with forehands and backhands, Nadal tried a few serves – the part of his game that revealed the most obvious inability to play at full strength and, he said, caused the most discomfort against Fritz. Those practice serves Thursday were typically used, by Nadal’s standards, with none of the body-tightening effort he usually employs.
“I was thinking all day about what decision to make,” Nadal said.
It’s not far from what happened to Nadal at Roland Garros, where he took multiple injections to ease chronic pain in his left leg and insisted he had no idea when he might get to the point of being unable to step on the court.
He tried a new treatment after leaving Paris, and it worked well enough, Nadal said, to allow him to walk without a limp.
His level of play over the five grass matches at Wimbledon was such that he felt he had a chance of winning a third title at the tournament after those in 2008 and 2010.
The injury changed things, of course.
“I don’t want to go out there not be competitive enough to play at the level I need to play to achieve my goal,” he said.
Nadal said he thinks he could be out for about a month. The final Grand Slam tournament of the year, the US Open, begins on August 29.
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