After missing out on the Australian Open 2024 due to his hip muscle tear, Rafael Nadal is backing himself to participate in top events for the rest of the 2024 season. Rafael Nadal will be playing in the Indian Wells or the BNP Paribas Open from 6-17 March 2024. This will be after his appearance at the Qatar Open from 19-24 February. Owing to his grand return to the California-based ATP Masters 1000 Tour after 2 years, the Indian Wells 2024 organisers paid tribute to him recently.
The Indian Wells 2024 Facebook page posted a video of Rafael Nadal’s best shots from the tournament throughout the years. Nadal will be appearing in the tournament for the 16th time this year. This is one more than Novak Djokovic’s 15-time Indian Wells appearance. This puts Nadal second in the ‘List of Most Indian Wells tour’ by a player after Roger Federer, who played it 19 times.
Nadal also won the tournament three times in his career, jointly with Jimmy Connors and Michael Chang. This is right after Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, who’ve jointly won the tournament 5 times each. Nadal’s first win came against Novak Djokovic in 2007 where he beat the Serb 6-2, 7-5. This was before the Serbian GOAT made his mark in the tennis world.
His next tournament victory came against Andy Murray in 2009. Nadal was in Cloud 9 that year, blowing all of his opponents out of the water. He beat Murray 6-1, 6-2. The third and final time Nadal won was in 2013 when he beat Juan Martin Del Potro by 4-6, 6-3, 6-4. Of all his best shots at Indian Wells, as shared in the video, some of them were against the world’s best players such as Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Alexander Zverev, and Ivo Karlovic.
Rafael Nadal will be back due to ‘Protected Ranking’ ruling
Rafael Nadal currently ranks 646th in the ATP World Ranking. This huge shift back in the rankings happened due to his injury, which kept him off the court for more than 6 months. Now, this is where the ‘Protected Ranking’ comes into play.
It allows players to compete in major tournaments who have missed out due to injury, maternity leave, or any such injury of its kind. ATP allows players to use the ‘Protected Ranking’ for nine tournaments after their return; not more than that. 5 other players also used the Protected Ranking system to play the Australian Open 2024.
Rafael Nadal also competed at the Brisbane International using the Protected Ranking system and was supposed to use it in the AO 2024 as well. But he had to sit that one out. Now, Nadal is slated to play the Qatar ExxonMobil Open using the PR system and then the Indian Wells as well. Rafael Nadal will receive a minimum of USD $18,660 even if he loses his first-round match and is out of the tournament.
Will he make an impact in either? Will he increase his tally of wins? Only time can tell. But Djokovic already believes that Nadal will be the strongest competitor if he is back for the French Open.
