“You lose, you move forward, I know the way; the main thing for me is to stay healthy, has been a difficult injury to manage” - Rafael Nadal after 1R defeat to Borna Coric in Cincinnati

Considering his injury troubles over the last few weeks, Rafael Nadal is not dwelling on his early exit from the 2022 Cincinnati Open. The Spaniard went down 7-6(9), 4-6, 6-3 to Borna Coric in his second round match at the Western & Southern Open on Wednesday.

The Croatian battled Nadal for two hours and 51 minutes to secure his biggest win (by both opponent and stage) of the season and advance to the third round.

Speaking at his post-match press conference, the 22-time Grand Slam champion opened up on his struggles with injuries.

“You lose. You move forward. I know the way. The main thing for me is to stay healthy. Has been a difficult injury to manage, to be honest. The last month and a half haven't been easy, because having a tear on the abdominal, you don't know when is 100% over the thing, so that affects a little bit in terms of not sure if you are able to try your best in every serve,” he said.

Nadal also gave an honest assessment of his match, stating that there’s a lot of work to be done before the US Open.

“Difficult to take a lot of positive things, but, I mean, I need to improve. I need to practice. I need to return better. I need days, and that's the true, no? Obviously I had my chances the beginning. In the tiebreak I had two important chances with two set points that I played terrible with two more-or-less easy shots. And then, yeah, bad game in the third. That's it,” he said.

“Tennis, under these circumstances, against a player who served well, I had my chance at the beginning in the third with Love-30 and I played a couple of, yeah, terrible points. Of course, it's better because when you are coming back from a period of time outside, if you are able to win the first match, then things get better. But that was not the case today. One day [it] will happen. It's obvious that I was not ready enough to win the match today,” he added.

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“I don't think is an important topic at all” - Rafael Nadal refuses to get involved in the debate over tennis balls used at US Open

The US Open is the only Grand Slam that uses different tennis balls for men and women.

The tennis balls that will be used at the US Open have recently become the center of debate. Iga Swiatek became the latest player to give her views on the subject.

In a press conference at the Western and Southern Open, the World No. 1 expressed her dislike for the extremely light balls and said that most players in the top 10 have complained about the balls in use at the US Open.

“Oh, my God. Honestly, I don't like them. I think those balls are horrible, especially after like three games of really hard play, they are getting more and more light. They fly like crazy,” she said.

“I don't know why they are different from men. Plus, we can't get those balls in Europe. When we buy them at [a] store, they are totally different from the tournament balls. When I'm practicing with US Open balls at home, I'm practicing with men's ones,” she added.

Asked for his opinion on the same, Nadal said that he wasn’t very aware of how different the balls used in men’s and women’s circuits were, adding that it was not an important topic for him.

“I don't know. I don't have any idea of that [US Open having different balls for men and women]. I see that the women's balls have the number in red. Our ones have the number in black. But of course, I didn't try, because I practice with the ball that I played,” Nadal said, adding, “But I don't think is an important topic at all.”