{"id":479529,"date":"2024-03-04T06:59:13","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T10:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/?post_type=news&#038;p=479529"},"modified":"2024-03-04T04:47:28","modified_gmt":"2024-03-04T08:47:28","slug":"nadal-praises-alcaraz-after-exhibition-defeat","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/news\/nadal-praises-alcaraz-after-exhibition-defeat\/","title":{"rendered":"Nadal praises Alcaraz after exhibition defeat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former No. 1 Rafel Nadal expressed relief about nearing the end of his tennis career, acknowledging that he won&#8217;t have to face Carlos Alcaraz too frequently. The 37-year-old Spaniard conceded to his compatriot in an exhibition match in Las Vegas on Sunday. Nadal, a 22-time Grand Slam champion, praised the 20-year-old Alcaraz, stating that the future of Spanish tennis is in capable hands.<\/p>\n<p>Alcaraz, already a U.S. Open and Wimbledon champion, is currently No. 2 behind Novak Djokovic. Nadal, anticipating his retirement in 2024 due to a series of injuries impacting his appearances, emphasized the joy of watching Alcaraz play as a fan in the years to come.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In Spain, we should be very, very happy about having someone like Carlos coming. He&#8217;s an amazing player. He&#8217;s only 20 years old and has already won two Grand Slams and a couple of important tournaments,&#8221; Nadal said.<\/p>\n<p>Despite spending almost a year on the sidelines due to a hip flexor injury and suffering a muscle injury at the start of this season, Nadal remarked that he felt &#8220;much better than expected&#8221; during the exhibition match. Both Nadal and Alcaraz are set to compete next in the Masters tournament at Indian Wells.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/z5YwExpV4Eo?si=1wECLq4mU_Pg875X\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former No. 1 Rafel Nadal expressed relief about nearing the end of his tennis career, acknowledging that he won&#8217;t have to face Carlos [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":479530,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"tags":[16732,17409],"news_category":[16714],"gn_keywords":[17857,767],"acf":{"announce":"\"He's an amazing player\", the Spaniard said about his compatriot","video":[]},"rank_math_focus_keyword":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_robots":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_facebook_title":"","rank_math_facebook_description":"","rank_math_facebook_image":"","rank_math_twitter_title":"","rank_math_twitter_description":"","rank_math_twitter_image":"","rank_math_snippet_shortcode":"","rank_math_primary_category":"","rankmath_seo":{"focus_keyword":"","description":"","title":"","canonical_url":"","robots":"","facebook":{"title":"","description":"","image":""},"twitter":{"title":"","description":"","image":""}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/479529"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/479529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":479532,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/479529\/revisions\/479532"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479529"},{"taxonomy":"news_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_category?post=479529"},{"taxonomy":"gn_keywords","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gn_keywords?post=479529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}