Serbian tennis player Viktor Troicki has confirmed that he will end his career as a professional player this season in order to focus on coaching.
The 35-year-old says he intends to ‘play a couple more tournaments’ before calling it quits for good. Although he didn’t say which events he would play. Troicki’s announcement comes amid recent speculation over his future in the sport. Last December he was named captain of the Serbian Davis Cup team and said during the same time that his future as a player depends on his Tour results. This year he is yet to win a main draw match on the ATP Tour.
“I am already very much a sports veteran. I’m slowly finishing my career, soon, the plan is to play a couple more tournaments,” Troicki told Objektiv.rs. “I’ve reconciled myself to finishing this year. I am switching to other sports-related jobs, but more as a professional coach. I’m looking forward to this new task, new challenges and I hope that it will go well.”
Troicki has been ranked as high as 12th in the world back in 2011 and has won three ATP titles. Two of which were at the Sydney International in 2015 and 2016. He has also featured in 39 Grand Slam main draws with his best runs being to the fourth round of the French Open three times and Wimbledon twice. In the Masters events Troicki reached the semi-finals of Monte Carlo in 2009 and then Madrid the following year.
Two years after reaching his career ranking high, the Serbian found himself on the sidelines after being suspended for a doping violation. Troicki was initially handed a 18-month suspension for refusing to do a blood test before a successful appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) reduced it to 12 months. He cites illness and a fear of needles for the reason why he skipped it. Furthermore, Troicki maintained that he was told by doping control officer Elena Gorodilova that he was allowed to do such a thing.
Currently ranked 195th in the world, Troicki has achieved a win-loss record of 293-272 on the Tour as of April 26th 2021. He has scored wins over Andy Roddick, Rafael Nadal, David Ferrer, Novak Djokovic, jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Marin Cilic, Dominic Thiem and Milos Raonic while they were ranked in the world’s top 10.
