On Tuesday morning, the tall Argentine Juan Martin Del Potro made what has been a remarkable return from tennis extinction, as he played his first match in eleven months against Sergiy Stakhovsky.
Many fans were yearning for the void to be filled while Juan Martin was out of the game, but there aren’t many characters like the Argentine in the game, and his emotional celebration after his victory on Tuesday reminded us of everything we’ve been missing for the best part of a year.
Will Juan Martin’s return to the tour be successful judging by what’s taken place so far? It really depends on what one defines as successful. Wrist surgery was bad enough, but the persistence of his injury suggests that there is a long way to go on the way to recovery. A realistic aim for him would be getting back in the Top 50 of the world rankings—he’s currently outside the Top 300—and a few good runs at grand slam level would firmly put him back in the frame.
Let us not forget that Juan Martin Del Potro was the only player outside of the “Big Four” to win a Grand Slam in thirty-four tournaments. Between 2006 and 2013, a winner of a grand slam title was named either Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray, Roger Federer or Novak Djokovic, not including the one triumph by none other than Juan Martin in 2009’s US Open. In that US Open, Del Potro became just the second player to beat Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer in the same grand slam event. The other player? Novak Djokovic.
Del Potro seems to still have to deal with the day-to-day worries of whether his wrist will hold up and has to perform exercises after every match that sees him focus on recovery of his wrist after a battle-hardened time on the court. But that doesn’t mean it’s all doom and gloom for Del Potro. Greats like Rod Laver suffered with persisting elbow and wrist problems and had no other choice but to give a great deal of time on nursing the ailment day by day. Laver went on to win all four Grand Slams in 1969 after those injuries, so it’s possible for Del Potro to still earn some more success, even if we are talking about a different era, different players, different surfaces and, more importantly, different tennis equipment.
Del Potro, during his encounter with Stakhovsky, continued to persist with slicing his backhand, which goes to show that he’s still not one hundred percent confident in drilling that side, as we all know a double-handed backhand user puts more pressure on the left wrist when gripping and ripping on the backhand, which Del Potro can’t always do because of the underlying issues he’s had after multiple wrist surgeries.
The former world number four has a long way to go, but I have a feeling that he can defend his Sydney crown. One little step to hopefully a positive return to the higher echelons of the sport.
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