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  • Beaten Nadal refuses grievance meeting with ATP boss over schedule

    5/8/08 11:29 AM | Johan Lindahl
    Beaten Nadal refuses grievance meeting with ATP boss over schedule Rafael Nadal vows to resume his clay campaign in Hamburg next week after his first career loss in Rome. But the seething Spaniard won't bother to meet with the top ATP boss to complain about a crowded spring calendar.

    With ATP supremo Etienne de Villiers in Rome, Nadal left quickly. categorically refusing to discuss grievances. “I don‘t have nothing to speak with this man, no more.

    ”You just lose more time trying to fight for nothing, it‘s very stupid. Last year I lost a lot of time trying to understand why he doing these things.

    He‘s impossible to understand,“ Nadal said of the South African, who has been at the helm for less than two years.

    Nadal, Roger Federer and a majority of the world Top-20 have reportedly signed a letter to de Villiers voicing their complaints about the calendar plus the expulsion of Hamburg from the elite Masters Series in a 2009 shake-up.

    That matter is going to court in the US in a financially draining scenario for the ATP, which according to published reports in the US lost $5 million in 2007, due in part to growing legal fees.

    Nadal, beaten in the Rome second round by Juan Carlos Ferrero and suffeinrg with blisters, called the current ATP calendar ”impossible.“

    ”Last week and in Barcelona (his fourth title in a row) everybody is talking about how you feel about the calendar and everything.

    “I said for me it is going to be impossible four weeks in a row to play well, no? That‘s it, no? I just try to go home to have some rest, and after that try to go with my best feelings to Hamburg.”

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