By Erik Gudris | Friday, March 7, 2014
Ahead of his opening round match at Indian Wells, top seed Rafael Nadal admits his Australian Open loss in January was one of the toughest of his career.
Photo Credit: AP
While world No. 1 Rafael Nadal looks forward to competing at this week's BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, his mind still lingers over what might have been in Melbourne.
That's because of the back issue Nadal dealt with in the Australian Open men's final versus Stanislas Wawrinka. The Swiss star would go on to defeat Nadal and win his first ever Grand Slam title.
"It was one of the toughest moments of my career," Nadal said to ATP.com during a pre-event press conference. "It's tough to be there for an hour and a half knowing you will not win. Not winning is not the most important thing. The worst thing was knowing I could not compete."
Nadal admitted that loss was even tougher to take than when Novak Djokovic defeated him after nearly six hours of play in the 2012 Australian Open final.
“When you are losing and competing, that's part of sport. This loss was worse for me than 2012 and the six hours against Novak. This one was much more disappointing because I didn't compete. I did everything right to be there and compete in the final, and I couldn't. Wawrinka was playing unbelievable. I don't know if I would have had the chance to win that match because he was playing amazing."
While some continue to wonder if Wawrinka would have beaten a healthy Nadal in that final, Nadal himself says he is only looking forward to the future.
Part of the process is returning to Indian Wells, which he won last year. Including Indian Wells, Nadal won four hard court titles in 2013 that helped propel him back to the No. 1 ranking.
"It was a very emotional moment for me," Nadal said about winning last year. "It gave me more confidence that I was ready to be back, ready to compete."
Nadal enters this year's event having recently won an ATP 500 clay court event in Rio. His first opponent at Indian Wells will be Radek Stepanek.