By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Tuesday August 10, 2021
Rafael Nadal has officially pulled out of the National Bank Open due to his injured left foot.
“I have had this issue for a couple of months, as people know,” Nadal said in a statement. “Of course, it is not a happy situation after all the success that I had here in Canada, not being able to play this year after missing a year. It’s a tough one, but that's how it is today."
In his pre-tournament press conference, Nadal talked about the difficulties of the injury he has been dealing with since Roland-Garros.
“As I said in Washington, D.C., I am going day by day,” Nadal said on Saturday. “It’s true that sometimes my foot is bothering me more than what I would like, but I need to find again positive feelings with my foot, I really need to have a couple of weeks with less pain to have confidence in my movement, in knowing that I will be able to go out and compete for a long time with good chances, and that’s something that I am looking for in these tournaments."
He concluded, in a press conference in Toronto on Tuesday: "I have been under this process of pain last couple of months. I wanted to try even like this. I went to Washington. I tried hard there. People who follow tennis, watched on TV, I was suffering, especially in that first match. And I was suffering on the practices, too, but you always expect an improvement or you hope to improvement, and that's why I came here. And this improvement didn't happen, no? So I really believe that I am not able to compete at the level that I need because the foot don't allow me to move the way that I need."