Kyrgios into maiden grand slam singles final after Nadal withdraws from Wimbledon

The highly anticipated semifinal match between Canberra’s Nick Kyrgios and 22-time Grand Slam singles champion, Rafael Nadal won’t go ahead after Nadal announced his withdrawal from the tournament.

Despite being troubled by a stomach injury in his quarterfinal match against Taylor Fritz, and coming through that match, Nadal made the tough decision to withdraw.

“I was thinking during the whole day about the decision to make,” the 22-time Grand Slam champion said.

“I think it doesn’t make sense to go on. Even if I tried a lot of times during my career to keep going under very tough circumstances, in that one I think it’s obvious that if I keep going, the injury will get worse and worse. That’s the thing that I can say now. I feel very sad to say that, it’s a very tough one.”

“I made my decision because I believe that I can’t win two matches under these circumstances. I can’t serve. It’s not only that I can’t serve at the right speed, it’s that I can’t do the normal movement to serve,” he explained.

“For respect to myself in some way, I don’t want to go out there, not be competitive enough to play at the level that I need to play to achieve my goal, and with a big chance to make things much worse.

“As I always said, for me the most important thing is happiness more than any title, even if everybody knows how much effort I put to be here. But I can’t risk that match and stay two, three months outside of the competition because that’s going to be a tough thing for me.”

Kyrgios won the Australian Open doubles title in 2022 with Thanasi Kokkinakis. In singles he had never advanced to a singles semifinal at a Grand Slam.

The Australian awaits the winner of the match between defending champion Novak Djokovic and local hope, Cameron Norrie.

After hearing news of the withdrawal, Kyrgios posted the following message on instragram: ‘Different players, different personalities. @rafaelnadal I hope your recovery goes well and we all hope to see you healthy soon. Till next time.’