Rafael Nadal has been struggling for many years with his foot injury. The Spaniard has made a name for himself as one of the greatest tennis players of all time despite having a number of fitness issues, most notably with his foot.
Rafael Nadal experiences frequent flare-ups of Mueller-Weiss syndrome, a chronic illness that has caused him to miss numerous competitions over the years, especially on hard courts.
When Nadal wrote about his early foot injury issues in 2006, he claimed that the first twinge he experienced occurred during the 2005 Madrid Open final against Ivan Ljubicic. The 36-year-old believed the pain would go away, but the morning after the game, his foot was swollen.
“It was during the game against Ljubicic in Madrid on October 17 that I felt the first twinge. I didn’t take it all that seriously at the time, and accustomed as I was to competing in pain, I kept playing. That night it began to hurt a lot more, but I still wasn’t alarmed. I thought it was the inevitable consequence of having played a hard five-set match and that the next day it would pass,” he revealed.
However, the problem remained and things got so bad that he was even struggling to share his situation with his then-girlfriend Maria Francisca Perello. Rafa commented: “I didn’t talk about the injury even to my closest friends; at first, I couldn’t bear even to open up about it with my girlfriend, María Francisca, who was growing baffled and alarmed by the change she saw in me.”
Rafael Nadal in 2022
Now the world no.2, the Spaniard played his last match on the 17th of November when he overcame world no.3 Casper Ruud 7-5 7-5 in the round robin in the Nitto ATP Finals (draw).
Currently, during this year the Spaniard achieved a composed 39-8 match record. The Spaniard has won 4 titles in 2022 in Melbourne, Australian Open, Acapulco and French Open. The Spaniard was the finalist in Indian Wells.
