Juan Martin Del Potro’s ruined career and life: ‘I want us to give a lot of love to Djokovic’

Few stories in tennis in recent decades are as heartbreaking as that of Argentina’s Juan Martin Del Potro: he was destined for number one, for a great career, and today he just wants to play two hours without feeling pain and asks for ‘a lot of love’ for Novak Djokovic at this Sunday’s December 1st exhibition in Buenos Aires.

‘I want that together with the people we give a lot of love to him, that he takes the best memory of Argentina and his Argentine fans,’ del Potro said in an emotional 11-minute video in which he explained the ordeal he went through in recent years.

Del Potro, who reached world number three and won the US Open in 2009, will face Djokovic in an exhibition billed as ‘The Ultimate Challenge’. His goals for Sunday, surrounded by thousands of compatriots, are modest: ‘To have peace for two or three hours and to be able to enjoy myself on a tennis court would be very nice.

It’s understandable: when you listen to Del Potro recount his last years in and out of tennis, the feeling is one of awe, and also of sorrow for all that he suffered and suffers.

‘When I played the last match with [Federico] Delbonis [in February 2022], the next day I took a plane to Switzerland and had my knee operated on for the fifth time. I did it with a low profile, in secret. If it worked out I made an announcement that I was really coming back.’

‘I spent two months locked up in a village near Basel, doing rehabilitation. It didn’t work. Another operation, the sixth, after two and a half months because there was a little thing left in my knee. I went to the United States, did more rehab and kept trying treatments.

‘I must have more than a hundred injections in my leg, hip and back. They infiltrated me, they tested me, they took me out, they burnt nerves, they blocked tendons…’.

In addition to the disappointment and sadness at not being able to continue with his career, in which he defeated the members of the ‘big three’, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer on several occasions, Del Potro revealed a certain understandable resentment towards the doctors.

‘When I had my first surgery, the doctor told me that in three months I would be playing again. This was in 2019, in June. I had signed up for Stockholm, Basel and Paris. Since that surgery I could never climb a staircase again without pain.’

‘On a four-hour trip to Tandil [his city in central Argentina] I have to stop halfway to stretch my legs. If I’m sleeping I get prickling pains that are very bad. It’s a nightmare with no end, I keep looking for alternatives and I can’t find any’.

‘Everything comes from that first surgery, every time I think about it I feel an emotion, anger, anguish, impotence’.

The 2016 Davis Cup champion said he felt the need to communicate with the fans.

‘I feel I have to tell them how I am, I always had a good connection with the public and maybe this can help other people.’

‘I was a very active guy, today they invite me to play football and I’m the one who brings the mate and sits outside, or if they go to play padel I’m the one who makes the videos. And they took away my illusion of doing what I like, which is playing tennis’.

‘Sometimes I don’t feel like it anymore. I’m not indestructible, I’m like anyone else. Sometimes I have to put on a good face and I don’t have the energy. My leg consumes me, I suffer from day to day. I get up and take between six and eight pills: gastric protector, analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anxiety pills…’.

‘The emotional pain [I have]…. I used to feel very powerful and very strong in overcoming those stones that appeared and I always beat them. Now I don’t know if I’m that strong. I feel that my knee has beaten me. I had eight operations with doctors all over the world and spent fortunes.

‘Every time they put me under anaesthetic I felt that I would come out of the operation fine and that I wouldn’t be in pain.

‘They stuck me with needles 30 or 40 centimetres long, trying to block the nerves. And without anaesthesia, because the doctor had to check if the nerve was indeed reacting’.

‘They insinuate that the problem is psychological? It’s tremendous, it’s terrible and I don’t know when it’s going to end.’

Del Potro implied that the doctors who have treated him are not doing their job properly.

‘I have another big fight with the doctors. Put on a prosthesis and stop screwing around. You’re going to have quality of life,’ they tell me.

But another one comes along and says ‘don’t listen to him, you’re too young for a prosthesis, wait until you’re 50’’.

‘I haven’t run since I was 31, I can’t climb a ladder, I can’t kick a ball anymore, I don’t play tennis anymore. Am I going to spend 15 more years of my life like this to see if I can live more or less well at 60? I’m in that discussion now.

Doctors are asking him to make a decision, Del Potro complains.

‘I have to make that decision? You’re the doctor, you are the doctor!

The Argentine has been training for several days in Buenos Aires to play the best possible role against Djokovic.

“I’m on a diet, I’ve lost weight. I want to get back to training, to be as fit as possible, but it’s a show to say goodbye, there’s no turning back. And Djokovic was very generous to accept it and come.”