“I withdrew from a game for no reason”

Andreas Seppi has been one of the most common tennis players on the ATP circuit for the last decade and a half. The Italian tennis player has been to all the Grand Slam uninterrupted since 2006, although he has never made it past the fourth round in any of the big four tournaments.

Now, at 36 years old, the Bolzano has related in an open letter to Behind The Racquet his worst moments on the slopes, and has told how the nerves have been with him more than once. “My worst moment in tennis was the year I placed in the top 100 in the world. In 2005, with only 21 years, I had my first big hit. In four months I went from number 140 to top 75. I had higher expectations and put more pressure on my shoulders. The following year, I suffered a lot to defend the points of the previous year and I was not in the top 100 for several weeksThe only time it happened in the next 12 years, “Seppi began.

“In 2010, I withdrew from a match for no reason. I won the first set and lost the second in the tiebreaker. I was losing the third and quit. I've always liked fighting to the end, so withdrawing from the game for no reason was strange. In a change, I told my coach that if I lost the next game, it was over. I lost it and retired. I told the chair umpire that my leg hurt, that I couldn't take it anymore. I got to the locker room and my coach came in. I thought he would be angry, but he told me he understood. I don't feel guilty for that game. He had been on the circuit for eight years, competing at the highest level. I got to a point where I just couldn't take it anymore, I needed to rest. My coach told me to rest as long as I needed. It was strange to me that he spoke to me that way after a game in which he had let me lose “continues a sincere Andreas.

“I lost a lot of games at that time. When you lose so much, you want to play more tournaments because you need to get ranking points. You travel everywhere to play. Playing so many tournaments at that time was not the right decision. Sometimes it is better to stop for a couple of weeks and train. Playing so many tournaments in a row without taking a break was a mistake, but you always learn from mistakes. After that game, I stopped for four weeks and started again. I immediately started to reap good results and reached the semifinals of two ATP tournaments “, sentenced the Italian.