Rafael Nadal, who is aiming to replicate his dominant performance of 2017 in clay this year as well, is currently taking part in the Monte Carlo Masters. He made his recovery earlier this month, playing in the Davis Cup tournament against Germany. He returned to the scene after last playing professional tennis in the Australian Open, where he suffered a hip injury while playing.

Notably, his arch rival, Roger Federer is missing the entire clay season for the second year in a row. When asked if he’ll ever take the Federer way of skipping a few tournaments on purpose, he said, “Of course, during the years, when you get older, you need to adjust a little bit more the efforts and the calendar,”

“But for me it’s difficult to say I am not going to play, for example, grass, or I’m not going to play hard.”

“There are tournaments that I can’t imagine missing on purpose, because they are the tournaments that I love to play,”

Despite not being able to make a dent in the Wimbledon over the years, he said he was still keen on taking part and not missing it on purpose.

“So I don’t see myself missing Monte Carlo on purpose. I don’t see myself missing Wimbledon on purpose, or the US Open, or Australian, or Rome. These kind of events I don’t see (myself) missing.”

Coming after a long recovery period, Nadal went on to win his second round match in Monte-Carlo Masters easily 6-3,6-1. Though he said he still needs more matches under his belt to be sure of how he is doing physically.

“When you play matches, you feel more comfortable, you feel more safe with your body, you feel stronger, too, physically,” he said.

“You feel less tired because you get used to the high intensity. Normal feelings that when you play more in a row, feelings are easier.”