Defending tennis champion Rafael Nadal withdrew from the Wimbledon Grand Slam tourney due to complications from a knee injury last Friday.

Nadal, in a statement, generally implied that he didn’t think he could win the tournament, so it just made more sense to withdraw from it, rather than risk further injury to his knee.

“When I start a tournament like Wimbledon, it is to try to win,” Nadal was reported as saying, “and my feeling right now is I’m not ready to play to win.” Nadal calls it as one of the toughest decisions of his career.

Nadal’s withdrawal marks the second time a Wimbledon champion declined to defend his championship status in 35 years, since Goran Ivanisevic did the same thing in 2002. The latest one before that was in 1973.

Want to earn some spare money as a writer for us? Send us an email!