Spain's second seed Rafael Nadal pulled out of Friday's semifinal at the Wimbledon Championships as he could not keep playing with an abdominal injury.

The 22-time Grand Slam champion held back his pain in the quarterfinals on Wednesday to edge out American Taylor Fritz in five sets.

He asked for a medical timeout in the first set and admitted that he thought he would not be able to finish the match for a lot of moments.

Nadal is scheduled to play against Australian Nick Kyrgios on Friday but decided to withdraw from the grass-court Grand Slam, giving Kyrgios a walkover to the men's singles final on Sunday.

"As you can imagine if I am here, I have to pull out from the tournament," said the 36-year-old in a press conference held Thursday evening. "As everybody saw yesterday, I have been suffering with the pain in my abdominal. I know something was not okay there."

Nadal said it's confirmed that he has a tear in the muscle in the abdomen and he has been thinking the whole day about the decision to make.

"I think it doesn't make sense to go on," he said. "Even if I tried a lot of times during my career to keep going under very tough circumstances, in that one I think it's obvious that if I keep going, the injury will get worse and worse. That's the thing that I can say now. I feel very sad to say that, it's a very tough one."

Kyrgios will wait for the winner between six-time champion Novak Djokovic and British ninth seed Cameron Norrie.

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