Rafael Nadal announced on Friday that he was withdrawing from this year’s U.S. Open and would miss the rest of the 2021 season because of the chronic left-foot condition that has troubled him intermittently since his teens.
“I have been suffering too much with my foot for the last year now,” Nadal said in a video posted on social media.
Nadal, 35 and a four-time U.S. Open champion, most recently won the singles title in New York in 2019. He defeated Daniil Medvedev in a five-set classic and then unusually broke down in tears courtside in his chair as he watched a commemorative video honoring his career.