Rafael Nadal has long been an expert at playing down his chances but as he prepared to make his first outing on hard courts in a year, the Spaniard was unusually dismissive of his hopes of making a winning return here during the next 10 days.
Two titles out of three on clay in the past month – including a drubbing of David Ferrer in the Acapulco final – showed that seven months out through injury has not affected his competitive spirit. How his left knee holds on hard courts is an unknown, though.
Yesterday, Nadal said it was too early to tell how his knee was feeling at the BNP Paribas Open, where he has practised just twice. He hopes to win but he is clearly preparing himself for it not to happen.
"I'm happy to be here in Indian Wells, it's one of my favourite tournaments without a doubt and I am going to try my best, but I don't expect anything in results here," he said. "I just expect to enjoy playing again at this level, in a Masters 1000 and if my knee continues the right way, I really hope to maintain that level on clay in Europe."
Nadal, who admitted he has "good days and bad days", said the key to improvement would be if the former outweigh the latter. Having dropped to No.5 in the rankings behind Ferrer, Nadal could play Roger Federer in the last eight here and we have seen in the past that with Nadal, anything is possible. Not that the man himself agrees.
"I don't feel that," he said. "And it's not true that every time I go to a tournament I feel I can win. When I am playing well, when I am confident, when I am fit, I feel that I can win. I have a chance to win every tournament, but I don't have that chance [here]. I really don't think it's the moment to think about this."
Heather Watson's involvement in the women's event lasted less than two hours as she was beaten 6-2, 6-4 by Irina-Camelia Begu of Romania.Laura Robson fared no better against Sweden's Sofia Arvidsson, losing 2-6, 7-6 (7-2), 6-1. Andy Murray is scheduled to begin his title bid on Sunday.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article