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Rafael Nadal to miss US Open and rest of 2021 season due to lingering foot injury
Rafael Nadal has joined Roger Federer and defending men’s champion Dominic Thiem in withdrawing from the upcoming US Open.
The 20-time Grand Slam winner - a four-time singles champion at Flushing Meadows - announced on Friday that he would be missing the final major of the year and the remainder of the 2021 season due to a persistent foot injury.
Nadal also withdrew from Wimbledon and the Tokyo Olympics earlier this summer, missing the entire grass-court season after a demanding schedule on clay that saw him win titles in Barcelona and Rome before losing to Novak Djokovic in the French Open semi-finals, where he sustained the foot issue.
The Spaniard played his first match for almost two months at the Citi Open in Washington earlier in August, beating Jack Sock but aggravating his foot problem again before suffering a shock defeat by Lloyd Harris.
Nadal later pulled out of the Canadian Open and Cincinnati Masters and has now confirmed that he will not play again in 2021.
“Hello everyone, I wanted to inform you that unfortunately I have to end the 2021 season,” Nadal wrote on social media.
“Honestly, I have been suffering a lot more than I should with my foot for a year and I need to take some time.
“Having discussed it with the team and family, this decision has been made and I believe that it is the way forward to try to recover and recover well.
“It is a year that I have missed things that matter a lot to me, such as Wimbledon, such as the Olympics, how the United States Open is going to be now, (and) many other events that are also important to me.
“In view of the fact that during the latter year I have not had the ability to train and prepare and compete in the way that I really like to... I came to the conclusion that what I need is time to recover.
“I am (determined) to do whatever it takes to regain the best possible shape, to continue competing for the things that really motivate me and the things that I have done during all these years.
“I am convinced that with the recovery of the foot and obviously a very important daily effort this can be achieved. I will work as hard as I can to make it happen.”
On Wednesday, Thiem - who won his first Grand Slam title in New York last year after an epic five-set comeback against Alexander Zverev in the final - announced that he too would miss the rest of 2021 following a setback in his recovery from a wrist injury.
Meanwhile, Federer is set to be sidelined for “many months” following knee surgery.
The 2021 US Open is due to begin on August 30.
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