Del Potro confesses: "I imagined being number 1 after the 2019 Australian Open"

Between shattered dreams and chronic pain, Juan Martín del Potro opens up about the career he could have had.

© AFP

Arthur Millot

le 16/12/2025 à 06h58

2 min to read

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Juan Martín del Potro was never an ordinary player. A hero to an entire continent, he embodied the promise of a conquering and modern South American tennis.

But behind the 2009 US Open, behind the monstrous forehand and the tears against Federer, lies a career eaten away by pain, injections, and an obsessive dream: to become world number 1.

And in an interview with ESPN, the Argentine opened up: "I imagined being number one after the 2019 Australian Open."

A legitimate ambition, but unfortunately cut short by his body.

Del Potro, a champion forged in pain

Juan Martín del Potro has experienced it all: supreme glory, boiling atmospheres, but also the most brutal underside of professional tennis: wrist, knee, repeated surgeries... to the point of mental exhaustion.

"I underwent many injections. Many. In the knee, in the wrist. Because I didn't want to fall out of the top 5 or top 3 in the world."

Caught in the gears of the highest level, Del Potro admits to having sometimes made bad choices. To continue despite everything. To play today, pay tomorrow.

"It was bread for today, hunger for tomorrow."

2019: the dream of number 1... and the beginning of the nightmare

Proof is in this confession. At the end of 2018, Del Potro was then world number 3, a US Open finalist, and physically impressive. So, mathematically, everything was possible in the rankings.

"I went there because I imagined being number 1 after the 2019 Australian Open."

However, the scenario was cruel. On the Asian circuit, he falls and injures his knee. And at that precise moment, the race to the top turns into a long medical nightmare.

When Del Potro confides his pain... to artificial intelligence

A surprising anecdote as well: Del Potro explains today that he seeks answers from artificial intelligence to relieve his wrist.

"I talked to ChatGPT so much. I had so many MRIs, X-rays... And in the clinics, the doctors had no more solutions. The body had given too much."

Del Potro, the greatest 'what if...' of modern tennis

Now retired, Del Potro leaves behind an immense... and unfinished career. A player who beat the greatest, without ever being able to beat his own body.

And this phrase, now engraved, sums it all up: "I imagined being number 1..."