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Rafael Nadal’s played a lot of matches. Playing 11 matches in eight days in Rio and then reaching the third round at Cincinnati, Nadal made his debut Monday in the new Arthur Ashe stadium.
After losing to Borna Coric on Thursday, Nadal admitted he needed a rest.
“The arm too tired. Elbow, shoulder,” Nadal said last week. “Two months and a half without competing, and especially without practicing, and then do what I did in the Olympics, come here, different balls, too much.
“It’s not the ideal situation to come back to the competition. After two months and a half and with an injury in the wrist, the normal thing is try to come back a little bit slower.
“But having the Olympics there I didn’t had that chance. Now I pay. I pay that, no? Was a little bit too much and my body was to the limit since after the finish of Rio.”
He added, though, that playing and pushing himself and risking further injury was better than staying at home.
“I didn’t want to be back home,” he said. “I spent enough time at home last three months. I needed to keep practicing, keep playing, and that’s why I am here and that’s why I’m don’t going to come back to Spain before the US Open.”
The wrist, though, remains a constant issue, one Nadal thinks can only be fixed by playing more!
“The wrist is still the same,” had said. “The wrist is still bothering me but is a process that I need to pass and a process that I need to go through. I need to play to go through that process. With more rest the wrist will not go better. The wrist needs to adapt again to the game. Needs to adapt again to hit the ball.
“The only negative thing is in one week I pass from not practicing almost anything and playing 23 hours in seven days. So that’s the thing. The wrist is not worse of that so that’s great news, but is not better. Still bothers me, but I need to keep playing. Day by day I hope that things going to go better.”
The 2-time US Open champion will be seeded fourth when the draw in released on Friday.
“I am well-prepared physically,” he said. “I worked a lot at home and I practiced, in the Olympics I played like best-of-five. Played two matches every day and spend for and a half, five hours on court some days. The preparation for that was good. It’s not a question of physical. It’s a question of being ready physically and be healthy. That’s the most important thing.”
Since the start of 2010, Nadal is 22-2 at the US Open, losing only to Fabio Fognini last year in three sets and to Novak Djokovic in the 2011 final. The Spaniard won the title in 2010 beating Djokovic to win complete the Career Slam and in 2013 again over Djokovic.
Rafa hasn’t won a hardcourt title since 2014 Doha when he beat Gael Monfils.
#USOpen2016 pic.twitter.com/VzaJSLH9LH
— Rafa Nadal (@RafaelNadal) August 22, 2016
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