It is the first time since 1931 that a man has withdrawn from the oldest Grand Slam tournament before a semifinal or final. “I made my decision because I believe I cannot win two matches under these conditions,” Nadal told a news conference at the All England Club. “I cannot serve. It’s not just that I can’t serve at the right speed, it’s that I can’t make the normal movement to serve.” The 22-time major champion sighed occasionally as he answered questions in English and then Spanish, for more than 20 minutes in total. Twice he described himself as “very sad”. Nadal said trying to keep playing could make the injury worse. The only other time in his career that Nadal left an opponent in a Grand Slam tournament before a match was at the 2016 French Open, when he withdrew before the third round due to a left wrist injury. The 40th-ranked Kyrgios, a 27-year-old from Australia, advanced to his first title match at a major and becomes the first unseeded men’s finalist at Wimbledon since Mark Filippoussi, 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 Britain for the championship on Sunday. their semi-final will take place on Friday. Second-seeded Nadal, a 36-year-old from Spain, is 19-0 in Grand Slam action in 2022, including trophies at the Australian Open in January and the French Open in June. This put him halfway to a calendar year Grand Slam for the first time in his career. Nadal has been bothered 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 win against Taylor Fritz in the quarterfinals on Wednesday. After that match, Nadal said he had considered calling it quits 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 around his lower stomach and took a medical time out to take pain medication. his father and sister motioned to him from the stands to resign. On Thursday’s day off, Nadal went to the All England Club for a light workout. He signed up to the official schedule to train at one of the match grounds, but didn’t show up there, instead opting for practice grounds that fans don’t have access to. Mostly content with forehands and backhands, Nadal attempted a few serves – the part of his game that revealed the most glaring inability to play at full strength and, he said, caused Fritz the most discomfort. Those practice serves on Thursday were generally used, by Nadal’s standards, with none of the body-torque effort he usually employs. “I thought all day about the decision to make,” Nadal said. It’s not far from what happened to Nadal at Roland Garros, where he took repeated injections to numb chronic pain in his left leg and insisted he had no idea when he might get to the point where he couldn’t take 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 in five matches on Wimbledon grass was such that he believed he had a chance to win 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 thought he might be out for about a month or so. The final Grand Slam tournament of the year, the US Open, begins on August 29.
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