He has been one of the best players in the history of South American tennis and one of the most brilliant in recent years, but injuries have never left him alone. Juan Martin Del Potrowho was forced to leave professional tennis due to a knee injury that could not be healed after eight operations.
The “Torre de Tandil” won the US Open in 2009 in a wonderful tournament in which he defeated Roger Federer in the final and climbed to third position in the ATP ranking, but the road became more than thorny after a fateful fall that He left the aforementioned joint battered at Queen's 2019.
“Delpo” spoke on his social networks about the hard moments he has experienced, prior to his farewell duel with Novak Djokovic in Argentina on December 1st. “The day after playing against Delbonis, I took a plane to Switzerland and had another knee operation. That was my fifth surgery. From then on I never made my surgeries public again. I couldn't take any more of the leg pain, so “I tried it low profile and if it worked it announced my return. I was locked up in a town near Basel for two months, they operated on me, I did rehabilitation and after two months they told me that there was a little something left and I had another operation,” confessed the former Argentine tennis player.
Juan Martín Del Potro: I must have more than 100 injections in the leg, hip and back
For Juan Martín there was no such thing as giving up and he continued trying, always hoping to enjoy his profession again. “Then I went to the United States, I continued rehabilitating, between surgeries I tried treatments. I don't know, I must have had more than 100 injections in my leg, hip and back. They infiltrated me, they took me out, they analyzed me, they burned me nerves, they took out my tendons. A daily suffering, that's how I've been since the last day with Federico.”remembers the native of Tandil. “When I had surgery for the first time, in June 2019, the doctor told me that in three months I would be able to play again. I had signed up for the tournaments in Stockholm, Basel and Paris but I was never able to climb a staircase without pain again. In the On my daily four-hour trip to Tandil, I have to stop at Las Flores, which is halfway there, to stop and stretch my legs. It hurts me many times to sleep, turning sideways. I wake up from punctures that are very painful. ugly”, added the owner of a Grand Slam title.
Even Del Potro's daily life is noticeably affected; he cannot carry out common activities and cannot enjoy tennis or other sports disciplines that he loves so much, such as soccer. “My daily life is not what I want, I was a very active guy, who liked to do sports, not just play tennis. And suddenly they invite me to play soccer and I am the one who carries the mate and sits outside, or in padel I am the one who makes the videos. For me it is terrible”, The double Olympics in London 2012 and Rio 2016 stood out.
