20-time Grand Slam champion Roger Federer says he is hoping that Juan Martin del Potro will be able to return to the Tour ‘sooner than later’ following a lengthy absence due to injury.
The former world No.3 hasn’t played a match since injuring his knee at the 2019 Fever-Tree Championships in London. It was at the tournament where Del Potro fractured his patella for the second time in two years and subsequently had to undergo multiple surgeries. However, the Argentine continues to be struggling with the injury. He has also reportedly undergone BMAC (Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate) which involves collecting regenerative stem cells from a person’s body and then injected into the affected area to aid recovery.
Like Del Potro Federer has also been sidelined by a knee problem in recent months but not as severe. The 39-year-old underwent two surgical procedures on his right knee last year. Questioned about his peer at the Qatar Open earlier this week, Federer stated that no timeline should be placed on when he should return. Instead the focus should be fully on his recovery.
“Of course I wish that Juan Martin can come back onto the tour like I did now. But the thing is when you’ve been at our level, you want to come back and feel like you can give more,” Federer told reporters.
“For me, this was a test, a true test to see how things are going to go and how things are. I hope for him he will find that sooner than later, but if it takes another month, two months, three months, however long it’s going to take, I just wish he’s going to come back and then he will be finally healthy for good.”
Del Potro, who is almost seven years younger than Federer, has said he is targeting the Tokyo Olympic Games as his comeback event. In the last Olympics he knocked out Novak Djokovic in the first round en route to winning a silver medal for his country. He also repeated that he wants to end his career on his own terms and not due to his health.
“I know he has to take the time because everything he went through is even bigger than what I went through,“ Federer commented. “So he’s got to be very clever about his return to the tour, when he does it, how he does it. And the problem about matches is you go out there, you play in front of people. There is no pulling out, really.’
“In practice you can wake up and feel, oh, today we’ll just maybe do an hour or we’ll do an hour of fitness and an hour of tennis because I know I can control that.’
“But in a match you don’t control things, and that is why you have to think twice how you return to the tour.”
It is not the first time in Del Potro’s career that he has faced serious injury issues. Besides having three surgeries on his knees, he has also undergone surgery on his right wrist three times and another on his left wrist. He has spent nine or more months away from the tour due to injury on four separate occasions.
The two tennis stars have an extensive rivalry on the Tour after playing each other 25 times. Federer currently leads their head-to-head 18-7 but lost their most recent meeting at the 2018 BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells. One of their most notable meetings was in the final of the 2009 US Open where Del Potro prevailed in five sets to win his first and so far only Grand Slam title.
