Rafael Nadal revealed he didn’t sleep very well on Monday as he started experiencing great pain once he stopped taking taking anti-inflammatories and painkillers. On Sunday, Nadal saw off Casper Ruud in the French Open final 6-3 6-3 6-0 to win a record 22nd Grand Slam title.
“No, because my foot hurt. After two and half weeks taking anti-inflammatories and painkillers practically every six hours, because there was no other choice, it has woken up. And today is a difficult day for me,” Nadal said in a Q&A with Spanish media, per Tennis365.
Following a French Open second round win over Corentin Moutet, Nadal and his team realized they needed to change his treatment. “I was limping badly. I still hadn’t injected my nerve,” Nadal revealed. “From there, we came to the conclusion that I couldn’t keep injecting myself where I had been because it was continuing to get worse.
We made the decision to inject the nerve at a distance, and that was a good decision. If we hadn’t done that, we would never have got to this point.”
Nadal on how it feels to play with a ‘numb’ foot
After winning the French Open, Nadal said his foot was “asleep” for two weeks.
“They blocked the sensory nerves at a distance,” Nadal explained. “If the motor nerves are numbed, you can’t move your foot. This isn’t an exact science either, because there are days when the numbness is a bit lower.
For example, yesterday in the final, my toes went to sleep and my feel was worse, but you have to control your ankle. I continued to control it enough to be able to compete. You have control of your foot, but there is no sensation.
There may be a little more risk of twisting your ankle. The way I’m playing, with a numb foot, it doesn’t matter if there’s less feeling because I go from limping to being pain free. It can’t continue, but I was able to win the tournament because I could move and run. That wasn’t the case in Madrid or Rome”.
Source: Tennis World USA