Nadal withdraws from Dubai Championship

The ATP 250 Qatar Open and the ATP 500 Dubai Championship are the events Nadal is expected to attend to prepare for important tournaments in the US in March. The Spaniard's failure to compete in February raised suspicions that he would not be able to attend the two Masters 1000s at Indian Wells and Miami.

Nadal has not played since being eliminated in the second round of the Australian Open on January 18. The scan results later showed that "King of Clay" had a second degree hip muscle tear. Nadal therefore needs a minimum of six weeks to recover. The coaching staff had expected the 36-year-old tennis player to return sooner, but it is likely that this will not come true.

According to Spanish newspaper Marca, in the worst case Nadal could only return when the clay season begins in April. This means that the 22 Grand Slam owner will lose many points in the next two months, when he is the Mexican Open champion and the Indian Wells Masters runner-up.

Nadal is ranked 6th in the ATP, less than 1,000 points more than Daniil Medvedev's 11th place. If he does not play in the next two months, he is at risk of falling out of the top 10, something that has not happened since Mallorca entered this group at the age of 18.

Nadal holds a record 908 consecutive weeks in the ATP top 10, trailing second-placed Jimmy Connors by 172 weeks. In the history of the men's and women's scorecards, only Martina Navratilova has more than Nadal in this statistic, when she hit the 1,000-week mark.

When he was eliminated early at the Australian Open last month, Nadal expressed frustration with consecutive injuries stretching back to Wimbledon last year. He said: "I have no complaints about life. But if I said that my spirit is not destroyed by trauma, I would be lying."