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Where does Juan Del Potro stand?
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In a young season already chockfull of great stories, Juan Martin Del Potro's win last week at Delray Beach holds a special place among fans of tennis and sports alike.
Champions come and champions go, but all too often, injuries and other factors take them from the sport they love, and the games we love to watch them play too often, and for too long.
While tennis doesn't have the brunt physicality of say, American football, maintaining a well-rounded physique is so critical to one's success, that even small injuries can turn into devastating amounts of time missed.
Likewise taking lots of time off, regardless of the reason, can vastly diminish the sharpness of a player's edge, leading them to feel the competition has passed them by when they return.
To celebrate Del Potro's achievement last week, as well as those who have come before him, here's a look at eight great tennis comebacks.
 8. Justine Henin - When she called it quits in May of 2008, still just 25 years old, the Belgian had seven Grand Slam titles, an Olympic gold medal and was ranked No. 1 in the world. She cited fatigue, as well as a desire to leave the game that had taken up 20 years of her life, and focus on her charity work and tennis school. After 16 months gone from the game, she returned. Henin was an instant hit in 2010, reaching the finals at Brisbane, then given a wildcard for the Australian Open as an unranked player. She made the final and battled No. 1 Serena Williams for three sets, the only player in the tournament to take a set off the eventual champion. Henin broke her left pinkie finger while practicing for the Fed Cup, but still battled back to win Stuttgart, moving into the Top 20. She would peak at No. 11, but had to cut her season short after Wimbledon when X-rays revealed a partial ligament fracture in her right elbow. She returned briefly in 2011, but in late January announced that the elbow injury would force her to retire once more.
 7. Kimiko Date-Krumm - The pride of Japan, Date-Krumm didn't just take time off to have a baby, she took time off to have a life. "Kid Butterfly" made her Grand Slam debut in 1989 and reached a career high ranking of 33rd in 1992. She was a constant threat in the Slams, reaching the semifinals of the Australian Open (1994), French Open (1995) and Wimbledon (1996) in a three-year span. She called it quits after the 1996 Summer Olympics, four days shy of her 26th birthday, then stunned the tour by coming back in April of 2008 at age 37. After warming up on the ITF circuit, she won the 2009 Hansol Korea Open, the second-oldest player, trailing only Billie Jean King, to win a singles title on the WTA Tour. She is currently ranked 52nd in the world at age 40.
 6. Juan Martin Del Potro - In the midst of Roger Federer's assault on history in 2009, a 20-year-old Argentine came out of nowhere. After missing time with a back injury in 2008, Del Potro was seeded sixth for the 2009 US Open. He stunned Rafael Nadal in straight sets in the semis, then pulled the titanic upset over Federer in the final, 3-6, 7-6(5), 4-6, 7-6(4), 6-2. It was Federer's first loss in the Open since 2003. It also made Del Potro the only man to defeat Nadal and Federer in the same tournament. He went on to reach the final of the ATP Championship, and started 2010 by reaching the fourth round of the Australian Open despite a wrist injury. The wrist persisted, and he opted to have it repaired surgically on May 4. He did not play again until nine months had passed. He did not win a match until the first tournament of 2011, then lost in the second round of the Australian, seeing his ranking nose-dive to No. 485, after reaching No. 4 in 2009. From there, Del Potro began finding his old game, reaching the semifinals at the SAP Open and Memphis, then breaking through to win Delray Beach, returning to the Top 100.
 5. Martina Navratilova - To paraphrase legendary NFL coach Bum Phillips, I'm not saying Navratilova is in a class by herself, but it don't take long to call the roll. When she walked off Centre Court at Wimbledon for the last time in 1994, Navratilova left an indelible image behind, stopping to pluck a few blades of grass to take with her. She retired that year at age 38, but returned six years later in 2000, the same year she was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. In 2003, she teamed with Leander Paes to win the mixed doubles titles at the Australian and Wimbledon at age 46. A year later, she won a singles match at Wimbledon at age 47 years, eight months, the oldest player to win a pro match in the Open Era. Still not done, she paired with American Bob Bryan to win the US Open mixed doubles crown, one month short of her 50th birthday.
 4. Martina Hingis - There's nothing tennis fans love more than a phenom, and Hingis was exactly that, winning five Grand Slam titles before her 20th birthday. In 2001, she had surgery on her right ankle, and a second ligament operation in May 2002. Nine months later, she announced her retirement from the game at age 22. During the first eight years of her career, she was ranked No. 1 for 209 weeks and won 40 titles in singles, 36 in doubles.She announced a full return to the WTA Tour in 2006, making the quarterfinals of the Australian Open, but winning the mixed doubles Grand Slam with Mahesh Bhupathi. She went on to win the singles title at Rome and wound up the year ranked seventh overall. n November 2007, she revealed the shocking news that she had tested positive for cocaine at Wimbledon. She was given a two-year ban, one she has disputed since, swearing she has never taken any drugs in her life.
 3. Margaret Court - The greatest name in Australian tennis history, Ms. Margaret Smith left the game at age 24 with 13 Grand Slam titles under her belt to get married and move back home. Less than two years later, Margaret Smith Court was back on the court, and in 1970 she achieved history, winning the single-season Grand Slam. She added the title at Australia the following year, and lost the Wimbledon singles final while in the early stages of pregnancy with her first child. Son Daniel was born early in 1972, and she returned to play later that season, going on to win the Australian Open, French Open and US Open in 1973. Her daughter Martika was born in 1974, and she began playing again in 1975. She continued to play in years after she had children, eventually tallying four kids and 24 Grand Slam titles.
 2. Kim Clijsters - Like Court, Clijsters wanted a family, and so she left the game she loved in 2007, doing so in May despite having earlier planned to play out the season. She called a press conference in May 2009 to announce she would return to the tour, her comeback began with a quarterfinal appearance at Cincinnati. What followed was tennis history. At the US Open,she won the title, the first wild card champion in US Open history, and the first mother to win a Grand Slam in 30 years. Clijsters played a limited schedule due to her family life in 2010, but revved up as the season wore on, defending her title at the US Open, and winning the Tour Championships at year's end. She followed it up with a win at the 2011 Australian Open, her fourth Grand Slam crown, which returned her to the No. 1 ranking in the world.
 1. Monica Seles - Returning from a physical injury is one thing. Combining that with the psychological and mental distress caused by being attacked on the court is a whole other ballgame. Seles was just 19 years old, and had eight Grand Slam crowns to her name as of March 30, 1993, when she was stabbed on the court by obsessed Steffi Graf fan Gunter Parche. The stab wound only took a few weeks to heal, but Seles stayed off the court for more than two years. She finally returned in August of 1995, and lost to Graf in the US Open final a month later. In early 1996, she returned to the pinnacle of women's tennis, perhaps the most crystallizing moment in the sport's long, impressive history, as she won the Australian Open title, her fourth at the event, and her final overall. Not only was it a comeback from the terrible crime committed against her, it also occurred while she was coping with the announcement that her father and long-time coach Karoly Seles, had cancer. The disease took him two years later, but Seles fought on, becoming a US citizen in 1994 and helping the Fed Cup team win the title in 1996, 1999 and 2000.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 3/3/2011 7:37:54 PM | with 1 comments
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I've never rooted harder for her in my life
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It's not a secret that I've used this blog to poke fun at Serena Williams over the course of the last seven months - notably here, here, here, here, here, here and here in our legendary Fan Fight US Open video that racked up 65,000 hits, but did not earn me a nod for Best Supporting Actor nomination in a YouTube spoof for "Grumpy Old Man"
Why so much poking fun? Maybe it's because I started blogging for TennisNow.com on the first day of Wimbledon in 2010, watching Serena at her best as she took that title, then watching her come up with any number of excuses to not play a professional match since.
I suppose it's her right to not reveal the exact nature of her foot injury or the two surgeries she's had since then on it, but when you're constantly cavorting around in public and jet-setting across the country and calling it "rehab".
But on Tuesday morning when I first heard that Serena had been hospitalized for a pulmonary embolism, well, as the Wizard of Oz once said, that's a horse of a different color.
In 1998, I was five years younger than Serena is now, and in infinitely worse shape. But I was still young enough to think my body was indestructible, so when I woke up one spring day with agonizing pain behind my right knee, I thought little of it.
 Three weeks and three trips to the doctor later, the pain had moved from my knee to my thigh, and I was having shortness of breath. A cardiovascular surgeon finally figured out that I was suffering from a blood clot in my right leg - known as deep vein thrombosis (DVT) that had broken off and traveled to my lungs, giving me a pair of pulmonary embolisms (PEs).
When a blood clot breaks away and gets in your blood stream, one of three things will happen. It travels to your lungs, where it causes shortness of breath, low oxygen saturation, and possibly death; it can travel to your heart, where it causes heart attacks and possibly death; or it travels to your brain, where it causes a stroke, and very likely death.
Given that I'm writing this blog nearly 13 years later, I obviously did not die, but I did spend eight days in a hospital bed hooked up to an IV, and 2-1/2 years after that on the blood thinner Coumadin, which altered large portions of my life - namely what physical activities I could perform, the majority of my diet and unfortunately, had painful side effects that have affected my esophagus to this day.
Wondering when Serena would return from her foot injury had become sort of a joke around our office, but now she faces a particularly daunting challenge.
Having a blood clot of that severity automatically makes one a risk to get another one, and that makes strenuous physical activity where the body can suffer hard bumps and bruises - which are often the cause of the clot in the arms or legs - more of a possibility.
Despite taking every precaution, I suffered a second, minor by comparison clot in the surface veins of my right leg in 2005. It didn't take anything more to dissolve than lots of heat applied to it and keeping my leg elevated as much as possible, but it was a terrifying week of wonder and doubt.
The doctors will tell Serena as they told me, if you ever have another DVT or PE, you're on the medication until the day you die.
I beat my two PEs, and my thoughts and prayers are that Serena will return to the thing she loves the most very soon, having done the same.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 3/4/2011 6:40:44 AM | with 1 comments
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Can the Djoker win his way into history?
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Novak Djokovic will not go undefeated in 2011.
That prediction seems very, very safe, although with each dismissive win by the Serbian sensation, “never” seems less and less of a certainty.
For as hot a start as Djokovic is on, being perfect for an entire season is simply unheard of in this day and age of modern tennis. It’s like a baseball player hitting .500, a quarterback throwing only touchdown passes or a soccer goalie never allowing a score during a season.
Even the greatest players of the game have never gone a full season without a loss. John McEnroe came the closest of all, with an 82-3 mark in 1984.
While Djokovic won’t go undefeated for the season, he’s off to a sensational start, and with one Grand Slam title already under his belt this season, he can start bearing down on vastly-more important thing, namely cutting down Rafael Nadal’s lead for the No. 1 position in the world.
Even a hot start doesn’t guarantee a record-breaking season. In 1986, Ivan Lendl started the year 25-0 and finished it 74-6, winning nine titles and two majors. As gaudy as that mark is, it only gives Lendl the sixth-best winning percentage for a single season at .925, tying Roger Federer’s 74-6 mark in 2004.
Only three times has a man recorded a winning percentage above 95 percent in a single season – which translates to winning 19 out of every 20 matches.
Here’s a look at those top three seasons, and what Djokovic has ahead of him as he quests for all-time greatness.
1)  John McEnroe, 1984, 82-3 (.965) – Big Mac started off the year with a dazzling 39-match win streak, finally losing to his rival Lendl in a Roland Garros final for the ages, 6-3, 6-2, 4-6, 5-7, 5-7. Before that, McEnroe had lost only three sets. He won his next 20 matches after the loss, including the title at Wimbledon, then unexpectedly fell in the first round at Cincinnati to the 70th-ranked Vijay Amritraj. He shook off the shocker to win the US Open, defeating Lendl. Nineteen more wins followed before he lost to Sweden’s Henrik Sundstrom in a Davis Cup tie by the unlikely score of 13-11, 6-4, 6-3. Undaunted, McEnroe beat Mats Wilander in the next tie, then won the Masters, taking the semifinal from Wilander and the final from Lendl.
2) Jimmy Connors, 1974, 93-4 (.959) – Perhaps the most stunning part of Connors’ near-flawless season was that he was all of 22 when he did it in 1974. Two of his four losses came in a two-week stretch in August, but around that he won the Australian Open against Phil Dent, Wimbledon against Ken Rosewall and the US Open, also against Rosewall, part of a 15-title season.
3)  Roger Federer, 2005, 81-4 (.953) – As good as this season was, it was only one-half of Federer’s two-year stretch in which he went 173-9. That is absolutely insane. After losing in the semifinals of the Australian Open to Marat Safin, Federer rolled off 25 wins in a row, and by July 1, he had eight titles, including the crown at Wimbledon. After falling to Rafael Nadal in the semifinals at Roland Garros, he won 35 straight matches, not dropping another until the final match of the year, a marathon loss to David Nalbandian - 7-6(4), 7-6(11), 2-6, 1-6, 6-7(3) – in the Tennis Masters Cup title match.
If Djokovic is to get anywhere near this lofty air, he’ll have to pick and choose his battles so he doesn’t suffer burn-out, and improve his clay game – where he’s “only” a 73 percent winner during his career. That number only sounds low when you consider he’s nearly a 79 percent victor on hard courts.
More importantly, he’ll have to succeed at the other three Slams, having now won the Australian Open twice in his career.
And beyond that, there’s the little matter of Nadal, who has understandably lost some of the buzz he gathered while winning three straight majors in 2010, but still owns a 16-8 all-time advantage over the Djoker.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 3/29/2011 9:18:41 PM | with 0 comments
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