Juan Martin del Potro says he wants to “live my life without pain” as he prepares to face Novak Djokovic in an exhibition match to commemorate the end of his tennis career.
Speaking in an eleven-minute interview uploaded to Instagram in advance of their match on December 1 at the Estadio Mary Terán de Weiss in Buenos Aires, del Potro, 36, explained how ongoing surgeries and complications with his right knee have affected his quality of life.
“I haven’t run, walked up stairs, kicked a ball or played tennis since I was 31,” he said. “Do I spend the next 15 years of my life like this so at 50 they put in a knee replacement and I live okay at 60?”
Some doctors have advised the Argentine, who fractured his right patella twice in eight months between 2018 and 2019, to undergo knee replacement surgery now. Del Potro is taking “six to eight pills a day” for pain management, anti-inflammatory treatment and anxiety.
“I feel like the knee beat me, and I had eight surgeries,” he said, adding that living life on the sidelines of social sporting occasions like football and padel with friends, “bringing the drinks” and “making the videos” has been torturous.
“It’s very hard having to put on a facade 24 hours a day,” he said.
Del Potro’s last competitive tennis match was also in Buenos Aires, in the first round of the 2022 Argentina Open against compatriot Federico Delbonis. He had a fifth surgery on his right knee following a 6-1, 6-3 defeat, deciding to keep the procedure private. He would only announce that surgery — and three further procedures — if returned to tennis, he decided, or if it became apparent that there was no realistic hope of returning to competition.
“I couldn’t bear the pain in my legs anymore,” he said.
Del Potro had four surgeries on his right knee between 2019 and 2021, having first shattered it at the 2018 Shanghai Masters; the second time he slipped on the grass at Queen’s Club, London. He attempted to return to tennis at both the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and U.S. Open, but withdrew from both tournaments before accepting a wildcard into the Argentina Open, where he lost to Delbonis.
The greatest moment of Del Potro’s career came in 2009, when he beat Roger Federer for the first time in seven attempts to win the U.S. Open. Coming back from a set and a break down, he inflicted the Swiss’s first defeat at the tournament in six years.
Del Potro reached just one more Grand Slam final (the 2018 U.S. Open) despite reaching No. 3 in the world, and is most often figured as one of many male players to run into the ‘Big Three’ of Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in the late 2000s and 2010s.
This does not quite tell his story. His 20-51 record against those three and Andy Murray remains one of the best of any player to face all four in their career. He is the only non-European man to win a major since the 2004 French Open (Gaston Gaudio, another Argentine); the 2009 U.S. Open is the only time that all three of the ‘Big Three’ reached the semifinals of a major without one of them winning in the end.
He reached that 2018 U.S. Open final, where he lost to Djokovic, after multiple wrist surgeries forced him to remodel his two-handed backhand into a half-baked push. He instead developed a mastery of slice midway through his career that allowed him to claim wins over all three of the ‘Big Three’ following his injuries.
Del Potro’s idiosyncratic forehand, with its exaggeratedly high, elongated take back, allowed him to crush the groundstroke with barely any spin but incredible precision, its thunderous power obscuring the preternatural coordination required to hit that sort of shot again and again.
Alongside the 2018 U.S. Open final, he successfully returned from those wrist injuries to record a memorable win over Djokovic in the first round of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, as well as reaching the 2018 French Open semifinal. At the 2012 Olympics he played one of the great semifinals in tennis history against Federer, losing 19-17 in a deciding third set that lasted two hours, 43 minutes.
Looking ahead to his match with Djokovic, del Potro said it is “an event to say goodbye.”
“If I could at least have a bit of peace in my leg for two or three hours, to enjoy something on a tennis court for the last time, it would be beautiful,” he said.
(Top photo: Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)
