Friday 26 / April / 2024
Muscat: Roger Federer will now play 25-year-old Austrian Dominic Thiem in the Indian Wells finals after Rafael Nadal pulled out of the tournament due to a knee injury.
Nadal and World Number Four Federer were set to clash for their 39th match in the semi-finals before the former hobbled out of the tournament before the match.
The 32-year-old Spaniard had to bow out after a pestering knee injury forced him to call it quits after his quarter-final win over Karen Khachanov.
“I wanted to try my best to be competitive today,” Nadal said during his announcement of pulling out of the tournament. “Clearly I was not fit enough to compete at the level that I wanted to compete at,” he said.
The Swiss great will compete with Thiem in the finals with the aim to clinch his sixth tournament victory. If Thiem wins, it will be his first ATP tournament victory.
Thiem has said that it would be like a ‘dream come true’ if he won the tournament by defeating Federer. "But it will be a difficult task, given that he just won his 100th ATP title in Dubai last month, he said.
