Rafael Nadal couldn’t find his favorite racket in bizarre Australian Open moment – ‘I need my racket back’

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There was a farcical, almost comical moment during Rafael Nadal’s opening match against Britain’s Jack Draper at the Australian Open on Monday.

The top seed and defending champion was left without the bat he wanted to use against the Briton due to a ball kid apparently taking the wrong player to a stringer to be repaired. It all amounted to some amusing exchanges at Rod Laver Arena as he tried to win it back.

After realizing he had been left without a right-handed racket at change-up with the score at 4-3 in his favor in the opening set, Nadal was left amused but also confused.

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And he tried to explain to the bewildered referee: “It is this one for the stringer, not that one.”

“I need the bat back! It’s not that. I need the humidifier and everything. The ball boy took the bat!”

Eurosport commentator Guy McCrea was as puzzled as Nadal as to what was going on.

“I’m not sure what’s going on here. Something is missing,” he noted at the time.

“They took the wrong racquet to Stringer – the wrong racquet was passed to Stringer, who was playing with it.

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“He plays with a vibrato racquet and that was taken with the current racquet he was playing with. I don’t think he has a spare racquet, so I think there will be a delay here!

“Let’s see if he can snag another moisturizer here. He should have another, sure! I think he’ll take one out of the pack over there, and we’re good to go here because he was back up!”

It was Nadal’s biggest wake-up call in the opening stages as he took the first set 7-5 with a crucial break against the Briton to start his 2023 campaign in style.

Nadal later won the second round by winning 7-5 2-6 6-4 6-1.

The defending champ was pushed to work for the win in the early exchanges, but when it looked like the Briton had overcome the injury, Nadal managed to pull it off without much difficulty in the end.

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Stream the 2023 Australian Open live on discovery+, the Eurosport app and on eurosport.co.uk

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