Wimbledon: Rafael Nadal pulls out with wrist injury after 'very tough decision'

The Spaniard revealed on Facebook that he has been advised by his medical team to pull out

Rafael Nadal will not feature at Wimbledon this year

Rafael Nadal is to miss Wimbledon because of the wrist injury that forced him to pull out midway through the French Open last month. It is a further setback for the 30-year-old Spaniard, who had appeared to be recapturing some of his best form until the latest in a long line of injuries that have interrupted his career.

Nadal’s appearance at Wimbledon, which starts a fortnight on Monday, had looked unlikely from the moment he pulled out of the French Open after his second-round match. The former world No 1 first felt the injury at last month’s Madrid Masters. After suffering increased pain at Roland Garros he was told that he could cause serious damage to the wrist if he continued playing.

A statement issued on Nadal’s behalf said that he would have to keep his left wrist in a cast for up to two more weeks, after which he would begin “anti-inflammatory rehabilitation and physiotherapy-based treatment”. He is still hoping that rest and rehabilitation will cure the problem - inflammation of a tendon sheath in the wrist - without the need for surgery.

Nadal had already pulled out of next week’s Aegon Championships at Queen’s Club, which suffered an additional loss today when Jo-Wilfried Tsonga withdrew because of the thigh problem which forced him to retire from his third-round match at the French Open against Ernests Gulbis.

This will be only the second time since 2004 that Nadal has missed Wimbledon. He was also forced to skip the 2009 tournament because of problems with his knees.

Between 2006 and 2011 Nadal won Wimbledon twice and was runner-up three times, but in his last four appearances at the All England Club he has not gone beyond the fourth round. However, he had shown a significant return to form this year until he was struck down by his latest injury.

Nadal pulled out of the French Open last month

Nadal has had wrist problems in the past. Two years ago he missed the US Open because of an injury to his right wrist and before the start of this year’s clay-court season he had a different problem with his left wrist.

Roger Federer’s fitness has also been in doubt in recent weeks after the 34-year-old Swiss missed the French Open because of a back injury. He is returning to competition this week in the Stuttgart grass-court tournament and won his first match there despite being pushed hard by the American teenager, Taylor Fritz.

Federer won 6-4, 5-7, 6-4, the match having resumed with the world No 3 leading 4-3 in the first set after play had been curtailed by bad weather on Wednesday. Fritz, aged 18, levelled the contest on his fourth set point before Federer took the decider, which sends him into a quarter-final against Germany’s Florian Mayer.

“It wasn’t easy,” Federer told the ATP’s official website afterwards. “I thought Fritz had some good moments there. He gained control of the baseline, he had a little bit of an upper-hand at times. He served well and I was a little bit cautious, unsure of how to move and questioning my defence. These are the things I will need to iron out.

“I can take a lot of confidence out of this match. I need to improve a few things, but I served big and I was able to handle three sets over two days, and find some energy at the end of the match. I know I have an extra gear. My next goal is to stretch leads. Once I get a lead, I need to know that I can protect it and then take the next step.”

Fritz said: “It’s always disappointing to take a loss, when you’ve come close and you’ve definitely had chances in the match. I played great and if you’d told me before that I would have taken a set off Federer, I would have been happy.”

Federer’s win saw him draw level with Ivan Lendl on 1,071 match victories. The only player in the Open era who has won more is Jimmy Connors, with 1,256 victories.

Juan Martin del Potro, who is making his latest comeback following wrist surgery, followed up his first-round win in Stuttgart over Grigor Dimitrov by beating Australia’s John Millman 6-4, 6-4. He now faces Gilles Simon in the quarter-finals.

Johanna Konta is another player with an injury concern. The 25-year-old Briton, who broke into the world’s top 20 for the first time this week, suffered a pelvic problem in losing 6-4 7-5 to China’s Saisai Zheng at the Aegon Open in Nottingham.

Konta, who beat Zheng en route to the Australian Open semi-finals in January, took a medical time-out after the third game of the second set and appeared to be struggling with her movement in the latter stages. However, the world No 18 said the injury should not affect her plans for the rest of the grass-court season. She is due to play at Edgbaston next week and at Eastbourne the week after en route to Wimbledon.

“I picked up a little niggle in that match, but felt like I could get through it,” Konta said afterwards. “My pelvis basically rotated out of position. It’s just a small niggle and I need look to look after it. I’ll be looking to take care of it and look forward to the next match.

“Technically I wasn’t distributing the weight as much as I usually do. I wasn’t putting so much weight on my right side, so it was affecting me. But like I said, I played through because I felt that I had something that I could manage so that's why I finished the match. I think it is just a management issue.”

Despite Konta’s defeat, Britain will have a representative in the quarter-finals after Tara Moore continued her excellent run by beating the world No 67, Christina McHale, 6-2, 6-2.

Moore, the world No 280, had won a match on the main tour for only the second time – and the first time for four years – when she beat Donna Vekic in the first round earlier this week. She is in the best form of her life at the moment, having reached the final of an International Tennis Federation tournament in Eastbourne last week.

The 23-year-old Briton, who will face Zheng in the quarter-finals, broke McHale’s serve six times in the match. The American had no answer to Moore’s pounding forehands and lost in just 66 minutes.