Chris Almeida: So here we are on the first Wednesday of the Australian Open and Rafa Nadal, who won the tournament last year, is out. He lost 6-4, 6-4, 7-5 to McKenzie MacDonald who, if I'm being totally honest, I've never heard of before. But this is not really out of nowhere. We knew coming in that kind of early exit was a possibility.
Coming into this event, Nadal was going through perhaps the worst stretch of tennis in his entire career. So we weren't expecting him necessarily to be in the final or to win the tournament, but still, seeing him lose in the second round in straight sets is always a little surprising. The obvious thing we need to talk about here is that this loss was largely the result of a hip injury that caused him a lot of trouble. That is the most recent in a very long list of injuries that have troubled him. The foot, the knee, the rib… Jon, you've been talking now for a little while about how you think he might not be long for the tour. He hasn't announced anything yet. You have to imagine he's going to at least try to stick it out through the French Open but this does make it feel like we are rapidly approaching the end.
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