It looks like Juan Martín del Potro will soon be leaving the sport. Outside of some Hail Mary medical interventions, Delpo says he’ll likely be bidding farewell to tennis after his matches on clay in Buenos Aires and Rio over the next two weeks. Both events will hopefully offer raucous receptions on the surface he grew up on. I hope he’s wrong about his prognosis. I hope he’s overly pessimistic. I hope we still see him finish his career on his terms, at some of the bigger tournaments that he has lit up with performances over the last 15 years. But while everyone got very excited by the footage of him practicing earlier this week, all I could see was a wounded player protecting a hurt right knee, superficial tape wrapped tightly around a crucial yet weakened limb.
There’s this temptation from observers in the tennis world to refer to Delpo (and Murray) as mere humans competing against the extraterrestrials of the Big 3 of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic (this story has again been widely pushed after the news of his impending retirement yesterday). But this is not a good narrative. The Big 3 are certainly alien-like in their abilities and greatness, but absolutely nothing Del Potro does on court when healthy, or even semi-healthy, is normal. The forehand power is the much spoken about attribute. But what is often lost in how easily Del Potro dispatches those comically powerful forehands, is how complete and rare his talent for tennis is. The raw hand-eye coordination required to hit that forehand as consistently and weightily as he does, with an unusually eastern grip amongst the sea of more margin-friendly and modern semi-westerns. The touch and intelligence inherent in his evolved-by-necessity backhand. The mindset of a true champion, with a knack for finding his best tennis while under tidal wave like pressure. Del Potro is not just the Tower of Tandil in stature, he is a true giant of tennis ability.
None of this is better demonstrated than when Delpo came back from three left wrist surgeries, and was forced to hit his two-hander differently, more of a protective flat shove than a wrist flick, and having to hit his slice more often than not, in order to shield the surgically tampered bones, ligaments, and tendons in that arm. Robbed of what had been an excellent two handed, topspin backhand, Del Potro’s feel and natural instincts for what to do with that suddenly weaker wing, clipped by injury, were extraordinary. Something that would have taken many players far longer to adjust, Del Potro was soon beating elite players once again, and even making Slam finals, with not just that famous forehand but a slew of shrewdly placed slices and innate strategic awareness. Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, Murray, Thiem, Wawrinka et al fell victim to this evolved patchwork version of Del Potro’s greatness. The Argentine may be famous for that singular forehand weapon, but his ability on every one of his shots, whether delicate or devastating, was generationally impressive. Injuries gradually and unfairly tore strips of Del Potro’s wrists away from him, but on each occasion the Argentine evolved and still managed to thrive. One surgery on his right wrist in 2010. Three surgeries on his left wrist in 2014 and 2015. And yet Del Potro managed to play some of the best tennis of his career after each medical intervention. Sadly the right knee appears to be one final wound too far, even for him. He was handily able to work around his groundstroke technique, but you can’t work around an inability to move and run freely in tennis. Four knee surgeries later and not even Delpo thinks he’ll be able to make it back.
The Argentine’s career is likely being ended by what was a freak slip and patella fracture in a match on hard courts in Shanghai at the back end of 2018, and then again via a re-fracture after a slip on the grass at Queens Club eight months later. The kind of slip that happens every now and then but players usually roll out of with a mere bruise or scrape. In this case his kneecap took the full brunt of his fall on the rock-hard surface and fractured. He has never recovered from the subsequent re-injury. This isn’t a question of play-style, which is so often erroneously trotted out as reasons for player injuries, this was sheer bad luck.
Del Potro’s injuries force him into regular conversations about ‘what could have been’. But his career won’t be defined by the regularity with which he found himself in an operating theatre, even if that will inevitably asterisk the delta between his potential and his title haul (a still impressive 22 singles trophies). Instead he will be defined by his towering peaks. Serves and forehands raining down so heavily that they knocked, among others, the three greatest to ever play the game from their lofty kingdoms on multiple occasions. Delpo’s career will not be remembered for consistency, such accolades of longevity interrupted by bad luck and freak injuries. But when he was fit, Del Potro was nothing but elite.
Del Potro has 17 wins against the Big 3 of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic, and 20 if you include Murray in the Big 4. Del Potro wasn’t some bit part player in this shimmering, golden generation of men’s tennis, he was a main character. He often displaced legends of this sport not because they were faltering but because he was simply too good at tennis. Del Potro will be remembered perhaps most vividly as the only man to beat Roger Federer from two sets to one down in a Slam final for his lone Major title, and highest summit, at the 2009 US Open. As a result he is still the last non-European man to win a Slam title in this bizarre era of the greedy Big 3/4. Delpo’s title wins, consistently deep runs in high level tournaments in the rare healthy windows of his career, and contagiously gentle yet passionate personality have drawn in multitudes of fans from all over the world. A South American sporting hero and inspiration, standing up tall to sporadically break apart the European hegemony that is post-2000’s men’s tennis. The only time that all three of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic made the semi finals of a Slam, and yet one of them didn’t win the tournament, fittingly remains that 2009 US Open. Twenty year old Del Potro, at that point youthfully unburdened by the strife of eight surgeries and serious injury, showed the world what an unencumbered version of himself was capable of. He showed how high into the clouds those peaks stretched, and not even the best players of all time could reach higher on multiple occasions when they clashed1. Del Potro’s career has been brutally beset by injury, but while those injurious valleys have been low, his peaks are high enough that he will hopefully end his career with more of a focus on extreme pride for what he accomplished rather than the inevitable pondering of unrealised potential.
Delpo noted that he hasn’t ruled out more medical interventions, using Murray and Pablo Andújar (returning recently after five elbow surgeries) as potential sources of inspiration. I hope the tennis gods smile on him for once. Delpo is roundly loved and admired by his fellow pros, and you will not find a single player with bad words to say about him as a human being or competitor. His legacy is one of gentle humanity, hugs and towering tennis ability that often went unmatched even in a land of Everests.
In his press conference yesterday Delpo tearily mentioned that tennis was his life and his passion. So enjoy what may be the last two weeks of that rare passion on the tour. And pray for one last, unlikely glimpse of those skyward peaks. But if not, then merely hope for a man, who is just 33 years old, to be able to live comfortably and pain free.
Gracias Delpo.
— MW
Twitter: @mattracquet
See you on Thursday.
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Top: Mark Kolbe/Getty, Bottom: EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP via Getty
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If you’d like to check out how good Delpo could be I recommend the US Open 2009 final win against Federer, the 2013 Shanghai win over Nadal, and the Rio Olympics win over Djokovic.
I was so fortunate to be there for his match against Thiem at the 2017 USOpen, on the new grandstand, when he came back to win from two sets down, and saved 2 match points, even though he was hampered by the flu, and a fever. Towering, indeed. As sport goes it was as brave a performance as anyone will ever see. Thanks for this.
Beautifully written piece