Winning Roland Garros Would Be 'Superhuman' For Nadal According To Former Pro
ATP
Rafael Nadal is coming back to tennis, and he has some goals, but former ATP player Fabrice Santoro doesn't see him winning Roland Garros.
Rafael Nadal was never going to come back to tennis just to do a retirement Tour. The Spaniard is a very competitive player and is coming back to compete. Whether he'll be strong enough to compete for trophies remains to be seen, as Nadal is also skeptical about it.
To former player Fabrice Santoro, it looks like a fever dream. He's not the only one who expressed skepticism about Nadal winning Grand Slams. Famous coach Rick Macci doesn't believe that Nadal will be strong enough to challenge for the four majors, and to Santoro, who spoke to L'Equipe, it seems the same way.
If he wins Roland Garros, that’s superhuman, once again. But if he doesn’t win many matches, it’s anecdotal. When he comes back, he’s already won. I can’t wait to see him play in Australia… It’s a real buzz.
From a purely realistic point of view, Santoro can be right. Just coming back from such an injury at his age is a huge win for Nadal, but that's not how he operates. If that was his mentality, he would have never won 22 Grand Slams, and that's the point.
He's coming back to try and win the biggest events, no matter how unrealistic it might seem. We'll see how well he'll do in Brisbane and then also in Melbourne. The latter has always been a very complicated event for Nadal without much success.
Dozens of players are a better fit than him in Melbourne, and that will be tough. As unlikely as it seems, Roland Garros is still his best shot to win a major, and to be honest, winning a Grand Slam after this injury would be an incredible achievement.
Santoro is right, it would be superhman, but he's done some superhuman things in the past.
