Fish Withdraws from Memphis, Delray Beach

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Fish Withdraws from Memphis, Delray Beach

By Chris Oddo

(February 12, 2013) -- Mardy Fish withdrew from the U.S. National Indoor Tennis Championships in Memphis and the International Tennis Championships in Delray Beach on Tuesday due to ongoing health issues.

The Memphis tournament announced the news on its website, while the Delray beach news was originally reported by Hal Habib of the Palm Beach Post.

According to Habib, an official announcement is coming later today from Delray beach.

Fish, who has not played since last year's U.S. Open, had a procedure called a cardiac catheter ablation done last May to resolve a form of arrhythmia. Fish returned for Wimbledon last year, reaching the fourth round, and played a total of 16 matches, until experiencing a setback after a three hour and three minute match with Gilles Simon in the U.S. Open's third round.

After pulling out of his fourth-round match in New York with Roger Federer and taking the rest of the season off, Fish announced in November that he'd be missing the Australian Open and would begin his season in San Jose at the Sap Open.

But Fish announced his withdrawal from San Jose on January 31st, and after today's news, the 31-year-old, who is just four wins shy of his 300th career victory, isn't slated to hit the court again until March 4th in an exhibition in Los Angeles.

Fish's problems began last year when he started noticing an increased heart rate that he could not control. He reported waking up in a hotel room in Miami after a loss to Juan Monaco at the Sony Ericsson Open in a terror.

"I honestly felt like in Miami I was going to die," Fish told Christopher Clarey of the New York Times. After unsuccessfully trying to bring his heart rate down, the former World No. 7 was taken to a hospital at 4 A.M. for treatment.

Fish said in a New York Times piece that the symptoms first appeared last February, when the U.S. was in Switzerland playing Davis Cup, but they subsided quickly enough for Fish to keep his schedule. He defeated Stan Wawrinka in a five-set match the next day.

Fish said that doctors told him that it was unlikely that he was suffering from panic attacks, but it appears that the procedure done last May has either not alleviated all symptoms or produced a new element of anxiety for Fish to deal with.

Fish, currently ranked No. 32 in the world, is slated to play his next tour event at Indian Wells in early March.

(Photo Credit: Mark Peterson/ Corleve)