• Nadal "No player is more important than a tournament"

While

Djokovic

squanders his well-earned favorite label in a tournament that comes to be for him, saving the distance, something analogous to Roland Garros for

Nadal

, the Spaniard continues his convincing return to the courts after five months away from them due to the syndrome of Muller Weiss, the chronic injury he suffers in his left foot. "The preseason has had its ups and downs. We went to Abu Dhabi with the intention of picking up the pace. Until then, sometimes we trained well, other 20 minutes and on some occasions we arrived in Manacor and had to cancel the session", explains

Carlos Moyà

in a telephone conversation from Melbourne.

Account Moyà, finalist of the Australian Open in 1997, that there are much fewer people in Melbourne compared to other years.

The Covid, which neither Nadal nor he got rid of, continues to condition the normal development of the tournaments.

"The fact that Rafa contracted it put the initial plans in jeopardy. We were lucky that he tested negative before leaving and we risked it a bit when we got here. The truth is that I would have signed for him to show up at the tournament as how are you".

Winner last week of the ATP 250 in Melbourne, Nadal debuts this Monday against the American

Marcos Giron

, 66th, in what will be his first best-of-five-set match since losing to Djokovic in the Roland Garros semifinals on June 11.

"It sounds like a cliché, but you have to go little by little. If he's good, it will depend more on him. The initial rounds will help him refine and pick up the pace, always with the utmost respect for his rivals," says Moyá, who highlights the happy returns to which the holder of 20 Grand Slam titles has accustomed us.

"No matter how much time has passed off the track, he always comes back competitive, which speaks highly of his ability to overcome adversity. But we are aware that as the years go by it becomes more and more difficult."

precedents

Thirteen times champion of Roland Garros, four of the United States Open and two of Wimbledon, Nadal has only won once in Australia, in 2009. "We must not forget that he has played four finals and at this level the matches are sometimes decided by two or three points. In almost six hours, in 2012, against Djokovic, he had options to sentence. In 2017, against

Federer

, he had the ball to escape 4-2 in the fifth set, "recalls Moyà.

Since he was forced to stop after losing to

Lloyd Harris

in the second round in Washington on August 6, players like

Medvedev

, winner of the US Open, and

Zverev

, Olympic gold medalist and winner of the ATP Finals for the second time, have grown. "I'm not surprised by what happened. Daniil is number two in the world and his first big is part of a natural process. Both are among the natural successors of what has been called the

big three

."

"We have not been able to stay away from it because it is impossible," says Moyà in the Spanish early hours of Saturday, before knowing the final resolution of the Djokovic case.

"There have been mistakes on the part of all parties, but there are rules that are for everyone. 98% of the players have complied with them and only two have not. One of them [

Tennys Sandgren

] decided not to come," he argues. Nadal's coach.

The world number six today spoke in the same direction this Saturday: "No player is above the tournament," he said at the press conference prior to the start of the Australian Open.

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