Juan Martin Del Potro to miss US Open
Juan Martin del Potro will not defend his US Open title this year as he continues to recover from the wrist problems that have brought his 2010 season to a standstill.
After battling the injury all year, the US Open champion has now said that he expects to miss this year’s US Open as he continues to recover from recent wrist surgery.
It was less than 12 months ago that the 6ft 6in Argentinian announced himself as one of the pre-eminent players in men’s tennis after denying Roger Federer a sixth consecutive US Open title, an achievement he backed up by reaching the final of the World Tour Finals in London at the end of 2009.
Del Potro’s wrist tendonitis has restricted him to just one tournament this year, the Australian Open, where the fourth seed emerged victorious from a bruising five-set second-round match against veteran James Blake, before losing in another five-set encounter, this time against Marin Cilic, in the fourth round.
Even by then though, the 21-year-old’s wrist was causing him problems, as he was forced to pull out of Australian Open warm-up event, the Kooyong Classic, after just one match in order to have a couple of day’s rest before the first Grand Slam of the year.
Since then, del Potro’s wrist has kept him off the ATP Tour and at the start of May the world No. 5 announced he was to undergo wrist surgery in a bid to recover from the injury.
At the time, the player released a letter released to the Argentine media stating: "The recovery time is prolonged but it depends on many factors that can't be measured today."
We’ve now gained further insight into just how prolonged that recovery will be, with the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open now all ruled out for 2010, and the earliest potential date for his return set for the autumn, if del Potro returns to the court at all this year.
When del Potro and that massive forehand eventually do return to the ATP Tour, he’ll face the tough task of rebuilding a ranking that will have plummeted a long way out of the top 10. His ranking is already guaranteed to take a tumble after Roland Garros, where he earned 720 points as a semi-finalist last year, and when the 2,000 ranking points he gained from his 2009 US Open victory are deducted from his total, we can expect the Argentinian’s ranking to drop much, much further.
The prolonged recovery from injury also takes del Potro out of contention from playing in Argentina’s Davis Cup quarter-final against Russia in July, and the loss of the team’s best player could well mean that even if he does return later this year, it will be too late for the 2008 David Cup runners-up in this year’s campaign.
Tags: