Rafael Nadal claims he'd quit Wimbledon if he targets anything less than the title

07/03/2018

Rafael Nadal has sensationally claimed that he would quit playing Wimbledon if he set himself a target that was short of winning the title. He also revealed that he would have preferred playing matches before coming to Wimbledon but later insisted that he could not have everything in his favor.

Rafael Nadal would head to Wimbledon this week as the world No. 1 despite being the second seed behind archrival Roger Federer. The Spaniard had crashed out of the Wimbledon in just the fourth round to Gilles Muller last year and would be hoping to go all the way this time by winning the grass Grand Slam for the third time.

After yet another remarkable clay-court season, which included him winning his 11th French Open title, Nadal has had little grass-court preparation. He opted to pull out of the Queen’s for the second year in a row to stay at home and make his own preparations in Majorca. Grass has never been Nadal's ally in an otherwise glittering career but the 32-year-old has stated that he would expect nothing but a title from himself despite his lack of preparations and a poor last season.

Nadal has been of the opinion that no matter what preparations he has had he should always set out to win the tournament and if he does set the bar any lower, he might as well quit participating in the tournaments.

"Obviously if you give me a choice I prefer to arrive with a match behind my back but you cannot be in everything and last year I saw myself with options to do something important here, and I arrived without having previously played any tournament", he told Moviestar+.

”I cannot tell you a round because doing a good tournament is not just that,” he added when asked what he would consider a good finish.