Rafa Nadal already knows who will be his rival in his first official singles match, which will be played on Thursday at the ATP 250 in Melbourne. The 31-year-old Lithuanian and 104th in the world, who had to play the previous one, defeated American Marcos Girón (7-5 and 6-4 in 90 minutes) and will face the Balearic Islands for the first time in the second round of the tournament.
It will be the fourth match that Nadal has played since his return at the Mubadala World Tennis Championship in mid-December., the exhibition in which he lost against Andy Murray and Denis Shapovalov and in which he contracted COVID, for which I had to isolate himself at his home in Manacor. In Melbourne, Rafa played an official doubles match on Tuesday together with Jaume Munar, in which They beat the Argentines Báez and Etcheverry (6-3, 3-6 and 10-4) to meet the Kazakh Golubev and the Croatian Skugor.
Nadal last played with ATP points at stake last August at the Washington 500, where he beat Jack Sock and then lost to Lloyd Harris, before deciding to rest for treatment to alleviate his chronic injury to his right foot, due to Müller-Weiss syndrome, which has plagued him since 2005.