Rafael Nadal: 21-time Grand Slam winner says 18-match winning run 'impossible to imagine'

Rafael Nadal says his start to the season would have been «impossible to imagine» three months ago, and he is planning to play a full clay-court season as well as Wimbledon.

The 21-time Grand Slam champion has won 18 consecutive matches and will face Nick Kyrgios in the quarter-finals at Indian Wells.

But he admits his long-term foot problem has caused pain in recent days.

The injury allowed him to play just one event in the second half of last year.

In an interview for BBC Sport after his fourth-round win over Reilly Opelka, Nadal said: «I just love playing here. My foot is holding well, but sometimes it's true in the match that I hurt.

»It's difficult to hide that, but it's nothing new. Some days are better, some days are worse, but if I had signed a paper three months ago, it would have been to be worse than how I am today, without a doubt."

Nadal is skipping next week's Miami Masters so he can ease his way gently into the clay-court season, and seemed confident his foot would not prevent him challenging for a fourth title of the year in California.

Nadal won the first tournament of the year in Melbourne, the Australian Open and then the Mexican Open. Since the formation of the ATP Tour in 1990, only Novak Djokovic had made a better start to the season.

«The beginning of the season is unforgettable — something impossible to imagine two, three months ago. Sometimes things happen that are difficult to explain, and this beginning of the season for me is one of those things,» said Nadal, who also had Covid just before Christmas.

The Spaniard is now hoping to play in all of his usual clay-court events in Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Madrid and Rome before heading to Wimbledon for the first time since 2019.

«Tennis is not about how many