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Coach Paul Annacone suggested the constant injuries and long injury breaks were in the end too much to handle for Juan Martin del Potro and all of his emotions came into the surface following the loss of the Argentine in Buenos Aires.
Del Potro, 33, announced on Saturday he will likely retire after playing Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. On Tuesday, del Potro played his first match in two-and-a-half years. Del Potro suffered a major knee injury at the Queen's Club in 2019 and the injury required four surgeries.
Del Potro is feeling better now but the knee injury is still causing him pain. As expected, del Potro was far from his best in his return as Federico Delbonis beat the former world No. 3 6-1 6-3. "This was it right here, at the end of the match, all the emotions come into the surface," Annacone said on Tennis Channel, per Sportskeeda.
"After everything he's been through over all these years, I mean, you just want the players to be able to celebrate that they exhausted all their resources, seeing how good they could be."
Annacone: We wanted to see more from del Potro
Del Potro was tipped to win multiple Grand Slams and become world No.
1 following his victory at the US Open in 2019. Back then, del Potro beat Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer en route to winning his lone Grand Slam title. Unfortunately, del Potro never really had a chance to do major things as he was constantly plagued by injuries and recovering from surgeries.
"And for all of us tennis fans that love this game so much. We wanted to see a lot more of that man," Annacone added. "I mean, first first of all, he's a great player. Second of all, he does it with humility in class and so much grace, and to be robbed of the ability to just try to do that so, often all the surgeries, all the times he was having to rehab it just became too much."