One of the best soft-court players in the history of tennis shared his disdain for hard courts, though he had a great point to make about playing on them. Rafael Nadal expressed his concern for tennis players spending significant amounts of time on concrete courts and said that the ATP doesn't care about the safety of its players by continually having tournaments on such surfaces, the AP reports.
Nadal is worried that repeated play on hard courts that don't have give could greatly damage players' careers and their lives after they retire. The ATP has increased the number of tournaments on hard surfaces in recent years, and Nadal disapproves. The Spaniard is calling for both players and doctors to be involved in the decisions regarding how often cement is the playing surface for matches.
Until the VTR Open in Chile last weekend, Nadal had been out of action since the 2012 Wimbledon Tournament with a knee injury. He made it all the way to the singles and doubles finals in his first event of the year, but fell short on both occasions.
He lost 7-6,6-7, 4-6 to Horacio Zeballos in singles, and was defeated 6-2, 6-4 in the finals against Potito Starace and Paolo Lorenzi of Italy, with Juan Monaco as his teammate.
Knee injuries are especially challenging for any athlete to come back from, especially ones that require quickly changing directions and generating power from their lower body. Nadal may have a good starting point for a discussion on player safety, though coming out and saying it so bluntly might not have been the proper approach.
Nadal also spoke out about drug testing in professional tennis, which we observed here. The story includes a video and discusses when Nadal might be back on top of the tennis world.
The past few years have been a turbulent time in athlete safety reform as the NFL and NHL learn more about the long term effects of repeated head injuries. If ATP starts making significant changes to accommodate its players, it could be the beginning of a renaissance of athlete safety.
You can see Rafael Nadal's bio and stats here.