Twitter reacts as Rafael Nadal withdraws ahead of Wimbledon semifinal against Nick Kyrgios

After clinching both the Australian Open and the French Open, Rafael Nadal was favourites to complete the first calendar-year Grand Slam since 1969 when he made it to the Wimbledon semifinal. However, the Spaniard has had to pull out from the tournament ahead of his clash with Nick Kyrgios owing to an abdominal tear.

With this result, Kyrgios will get a walkover and will head straight to the final where he awaits the winner of Friday’s match between Novak Djokovic and Cameron Norrie.

“I have to pull out of the tournament. As everybody saw yesterday I have been suffering from pain in the abdominal [area>. That’s confirmed. I have a tear in the muscle,” Nadal said during a news conference at the All England Club on Thursday. “It doesn’t make sense to play, injury will get worse,” he added.

Nadal has been in pain owing to a stomach muscle for a week now and this pain became unbearable during this first set of his 4-hour, 21-minute victory against Taylor Fritz in the quarterfinals on Wednesday.

He battled it out during the match and even wore a tape over part of his abdomen. He also took a medical time-out before the start of the second set in this match and took painkillers to get through the match.

While this news did not come as a shock, fans still took to Twitter to express their disappointment over this development:

“I can’t risk that much and stay two-three months out of competition because that would be tough for me. If that happens, it happens, but not because I wasn’t doing things properly,” Nadal said as he signed off.