Indian Wells: Rafael Nadal gets ‘benefit of the doubt’ after withdrawing from tournament, says Andy Roddick

Andy Roddick has defended Rafael Nadal for playing an exhibition match in the build-up to Indian Wells, despite pulling out of the tournament.

Questions were raised over Nadal’s participation in the exhibition match before pulling out of Indian Wells, but Roddick revealed that the 37-year-old was in Palm Springs a week before the tournament to “get used to the surface and try to go through his paces properly”.

“Because he played in an exhibition, it doesn’t mean he is ready to go,” Roddick said in Nadal’s defence.

“Is he gonna go rip his body apart if his goal is to win one match at Indian Wells?

“No, every single decision that he has made from this point forward, and probably for the last 15 months, has been ‘let’s work backwards from the possibility of playing Roland-Garros’.

“That didn’t work out last year, we didn’t see him until the New Year started, we didn’t see him until January.

“He wanted to get some match reps in, not because he thought he could win the Australian Open, great if he finds something, but because he wants to work backwards from the French Open.”

The 2003 US Open winner went on to explain why an exhibition match is different to a top-level tournament against the “best players on earth”.

“These guys put on a great show in Vegas, they did everything they had to do to make it entertaining, but that is very different than going through the best players on earth on a stickier surface,” he said.

“Because you can play two sets against someone you are friendly with when you know they are compromised too doesn’t mean they are apples to apples. I think it is dumb to treat it that way.”

On why Nadal gets the “benefit of the doubt” by not featuring at Indian Wells, Roddick added: “Rafa gets the benefit of the doubt, he didn’t just come over for an exhibition.

“He gets the benefit of the doubt, he is not going to say ‘I am not playing Indian Wells if he’s not’.

“It would have been a perfectly acceptable explanation to say, ‘Hey, I don’t know if I can play six or seven matches on a gritty hard court right now, but I can play a couple of sets indoors’.

“No one would have cared, that’s rational, so I don’t know why all of a sudden we are up in arms about that right now.”