Another sad news for Rafa fans as Rafael Nadal is out of the Australian Open, pulling out due to a stomach virus that also forced him to withdraw from this week’s exhibition event in Abu Dhabi. The Spaniard has not played since suffering his shock second-round exit at Wimbledon due to a knee injury. Hopefully he will be back strogner than ever!

My knee is much better and the rehabilitation process has gone well as predicted by the doctors, but this virus didn’t allow me to practice this past week and therefore I am sorry to announce that I will not play in Doha and the Australian Open, as we had initially scheduled.