Rafael Nadal is the great Spanish hope for the ATP Finals, the last tournament of the men's individual circuit that brings together the eight best tennis players in the world. The exception this year in Turin will be not being able to count on the current number one, Carlos Alcaraz, injured in the abdomen during the Masters 1,000 in Paris-Bercy.
Despite arriving at the event lacking rhythm and with doubts, the objective of the man from Manacor is none other than to fight to win one of the few tournaments that have resisted him throughout his long career. His debut will be against the American Taylor Fritz.
The match between Nadal and Fritz will be played on Sunday, November 13 at the Pala Alpitur in Turin on the night shift: at 9:00 p.m. It will be broadcast on the channel
Nadal and Fritz have met three times, with a record of two wins for the Spaniard and one for the American. The last two matches were this 2022: the Indian Wells final that crowned Fritz for the first time in a Masters 1000 and in the Wimbledon quarterfinals, with victory for Nadal. Both games were hotly contested.
It will be the seventeenth time that Nadal has participated in this competition, but, as he himself acknowledged in Turin, he has not always arrived in good condition at this demanding final stage of the season.
This time it may be different, because the Spaniard, who has avoided the big 'bogeymen' -Tsitsipas, Djokovic and Medveded- in the group stage, is confident in his possibilities, although always aware of the difficulty of this tournament that he has never achieved get up.
"If I didn't think I had options to fight for what I came for, I wouldn't be here," he confessed this Friday. "I'm happy because I've been able to train and I come with the illusion of doing well. I'm playing well. It's better to arrive with confidence and victories because here there is no margin for error playing against the best", he explained.
In addition, he faces the challenge surrounded by his entire professional team, led by his coach Carlos Moyá, and supported by his family, including his son Rafael, who was born in October. His uncle Toni Nadal will also be in Turin, although accompanying group rival Felix Auger-Aliassime.
It is not the type of tournament whose conditions benefit the one in Manacor, which suffers on the indoor court, but it will seek to add to its list of winners the only major tournament that is missing and thus join the select group of tennis players who have achieved it in history, in the that the Spaniards Manolo Orantes and Álex Corretja meet.
Fritz, substitute for Carlos Alcaraz; Auger-Aliassime and the Norwegian Casper Ruud, finalist at Roland Garros and the US Open, tournaments in which he was defeated by Nadal and Alcaraz, respectively, complete the green group in which the current number two in the ranking is framed. Nadal, in case of being a finalist, would be placed as number one.
