- Nadal to compete in his final Olympics in Paris.
- Recent loss in Swedish Open final raised concerns about his form.
- Spaniard seeks to determine his best level before retirement.
Nadal recently played in the Swedish Open, where he displayed a high level of tennis throughout the tournament before losing to Nuno Borges in straight sets in the final.
Nadal aims to compete in the Paris Olympics, which will be his last appearance, but he has been cautioned by Coco Gauff’s coach Brad Gilbert that his prime days are behind him.
“He’s probably never going to reach his best level again,” Gilbert stated during an interview with CLAY. "But I think more than anything, all athletes want to be able to go out on their own terms.
“They want to be and decide that ‘you know what, maybe it’s time for me to stop’. He’s had so many injuries over the last two years that he probably hasn’t had a period where he’s really felt healthy, and so that’s what he wants to know more than anything before he stops, what his game is like when he’s fully healthy.”
Nadal, a 22-time Grand Slam champion, acknowledged that playing five matches in a week in Bastad took a toll on his aging body. The Spaniard has won two gold medals, singles in Beijing in 2008 and doubles in Rio in 2016, and will aim to retire with one more.
"I played the final, that’s positive,” he said after losing to Borges. “I was able to play long matches without having an injury, that’s good. In some way, I felt that I arrived here practicing much better than what I played in the tournament during the whole week.
“That’s something that I am not satisfied with. I arrived here with the feeling that I was playing a good level and I was not able to show that during the whole week.
“Anyway it’s a final, so I can’t say it’s a bad result because it’s the first final since a long time ago. But I was not able to feel myself comfortable enough during the whole week to be satisfied with the week of tennis that I played.”
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