Del Potro Brings Support Network To Open Final
NEW YORK — Here’s the thing about those boys from Juan Martin del Potro’s hometown of Tandil, Argentina, who every night fill a different suite, drink beer, provide laughs and make Arthur Ashe Stadium sound like a soccer pitch: The thing about those boys is it’s possible we’ve been underestimating their value.
Perhaps it’s because del Potro was sandbagging. He said one day that he flew a group of his closest childhood friends to the U.S. Open so they could finally understand his unique lifestyle. When asked a separate time, he simply responded, “They’re my friends,” and stared blankly, because that was explanation enough.
But when del Potro, 29, was asked Friday after reaching the second Grand Slam final of his career nine years after reaching the first, the No. 3 seed paid his friends their proper due.
Between del Potro’s five-set win over Roger Federer to win the 2009 U.S. Open and Sunday’s final against Novak Djokovic, the 6-foot-6 Argentine underwent four wrist surgeries, including three on his left wrist that made it difficult to hit a two-handed backhand properly.
Del Potro’s prolonged struggles made him depressed. He was home in Tandil passing time watching “Breaking Bad” and “The Simpsons” on Netflix. In 2015, he contemplated quitting.
“Well, you see the friends who came to watch me? They are very important for me to be in this stage, because they were behind me in those years, trying to keep my mind in a positive way, [telling me] to never give up during my wrist problems. I didn’t know if I will be a tennis player again or not,” Del Potro said Friday.
“But I’m here. I’m excited to keep surprising the tennis world, as I did with myself. You never know what could happen in the future. So I’m happy just to be a tennis player again.”
Del Potro’s return to the top of the sport — ranked third in the world after Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer — is nearly unimaginable after he missed 14 Grand Slams in the past nine years.
His talent was never in doubt. He, Marin Cilic and Stan Wawrinka are the only players outside of the “Big Four” to have won a major singles championship since the 2015 French Open.
His record against No. 6 seed Djokovic is 4-14, with the Serbian winning six of their last seven encounters. But del Potro owns one of the most significant wins of the entire series, a win in the first round of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.
“He was always a top five player in the eyes, I think, of everyone. Even when he dropped his ranking and started to, you know, work his way up. ... It was just a matter of time,” Djokovic said Friday.
Djokovic, 31, knows how it feels to make a return like that. He has a comeback story of his own, though it is far less prolonged than del Potro’s. A right elbow injury bothered him on and off for two seasons before he finally decided to have surgery in February. Djokovic regained the physical strength and confidence necessary to play at tennis’s top level and won Wimbledon last month, ousting Kevin Anderson in the final.
On Sunday, he will face his biggest test this U.S. Open. He hasn’t yet played an opponent with a forehand or a serve as big as del Potro’s, and the crowd will likely be against him. Del Potro’s boys will make sure of that.