Alicante: Spanish world No. 1 Rafael Nadal said he will return to action at a hard-court event in Acapulco, Mexico, in late February.
That means an encouragingly speedy recovery for the 16-time Grand Slam champion after he suffered a muscle tear in his right hip that forced him to retire in the fifth set of his quarter-final match at last month’s Australian Open.
The tennis star said he planned to compete at Acapulco in the last week of February and then at two other hard-court tournaments in March — the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells and the Miami Open.
But the Spaniard, who is almost universally regarded as the greatest clay-court player of all time, said he was focused on being at top form at the “most important time of year,” referring to a series of major clay events — the Monte-Carlo Masters, the Madrid Open, the Italian Open and the French Open — played between mid-April and early June.
