If Juan Martin del Potro played his final professional tennis match on Tuesday night, he had a farewell fit for a giant of the game.
The 33-year-old Argentine, sidelined since the summer of 2019 as a result of a recurring knee injury, fell to compatriot Federico Delbonis an emotional opening round of the ATP 250 event in Buenos Aires, 6-1, 6-3, in front of a sold-out crowd of adoring fans. Initially intending to play at home and next week in Brazil as a wild card in the aftermath of four surgeries, del Potro revealed that Tuesday's match might have been his last; while he left the smallest of doors open for a possible return if he is able to live day-to-day without pain in his surgically-repaired knee, both the on-court scenes and poignant aftermath had all the makings of a farewell to top-level tennis.
"It's difficult to explain how I felt on the court. So many emotions," del Potro said after the match. "The atmosphere was crazy, the people were crazy, and I had one of my best ever matches in my career with the crowd."
Speaking about the possibility of returning for another tournament, he shared this: "I don't know if it's going to happen, because the pain in my knee is very high. But I will keep doing a big effort to fix the knee, and if I get that, maybe I will have another chance to play."
The 6-foot-6 "Tower of Tandil," as he was affectionately called, enjoyed some of his greatest successes in New York, and played 10 US Open main draws in his career. In all, he posted a 35–9 win-loss record in addition to raising the trophy in 2009, and earned six of his 53 career wins against Top 10 players in Queens.
From his earliest appearances as a long-haired teenager, to a man who played in a pair of men's singles finals and shone brightest under the Arthur Ashe Stadium lights, take a look back at del Potro's storied US Open career.
Del Potro made his US Open main-draw debut in 2006, and a year later, he scored his first career wins in New York. As an unseeded 18-year-old, del Potro reached the 2007 third round before losing to Novak Djokovic, the eventual finalist. Later that year, he finished as the youngest player ranked inside the ATP's Top 50.
In a sign of things to come, del Potro reached the first of 13 career major quarterfinals at the US Open in 2008. He surged to 23 straight wins that summer, winning three straight titles in Stuttgart, Kitzbuhel and Los Angeles, before winning four matches in New York. It took four-plus hours of effort for evental finalist Andy Murray to beat him in the last eight.
Del Potro's championship moment in 2009 was historic in many ways. He was the first Argentine champion at the US Open since Guillermo Vilas won in 1977, the fifth-youngest male US Open winner in the Open Era, and the first player to defeat both Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer at the same Grand Slam tournament.
Del Potro trailed Federer by a set and a break in the final, and was also down two-sets-to-one. In the first US Open men's final to extend to five sets since 1999, del Potro handed Federer his first loss in New York since 2003.
"I did my dream, and it's unbelievable moment," he said then. "It's amazing match, amazing people. Everything is perfect."
He didn't get the chance to defend his title in 2010 as a result of a first bout with a wrist injury. Ranked as low as No. 485 at the start of 2011 after his lay-off, del Potro rebuilt his career throughout the year and returned to New York as the No. 18 seed.
His personal winning streak at the US Open ended at nine matches with a third-round defeat to France's Gilles Simon.
In 2012, del Potro again reached the quarterfinals, where he was defeated by Djokovic. Most notably, though, he defeated Andy Roddick in the American's last career match in the fourth round—an emotional four-setter inside Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Del Potro returned to New York with thunder in 2016 as a wild card after a second wrist-related sabbatical, having played just two other majors in between his second-round defeat at the 2013 US Open and quarterfinal showing in 2016.
He defeated his compatriot Diego Schwartzman—a future Top 10 player—No. 19 seed Steve Johnson and No. 11 seed David Ferrer en route to Round 4.
Del Potro led No. 8 seed Dominic Thiem by a set in the fourth round before the Austrian retired with a right knee injury, but the two would reunite in the same round for an all-time US Open classic a year later.
Thiem entered the 2017 US Open seeded No. 6, while del Potro was seeded No. 24. Having twice reached the semifinals at the French Open, Thiem was bidding for his first major quarterfinal outside Paris, and looked on course to do so after winning the first two sets, 6-1, 6-2, as del Potro struggled with the flu and a fever.
Admitting after that he thought about retiring from the match after the first two sets, the former champion soon got a second wind—and after more than three-and-a-half hours, snatched an improbable victory.
He saved two match points in the fourth set, where he erased a 5-2 deficit and went on to win, 1-6, 2-6, 6-1, 7-6, 6-4.
Del Potro wasn't done yet, either. In the quarterfinals, he again defeated Federer on the Open's biggest stage. The four-set win over Federer—his second in New York—put del Potro back in a Grand Slam semifinal for the first time in six years, where he was beaten by eventual champion Nadal.
Del Potro's final US Open appearance to date in 2018 was another one for the history books. Ranked a career-high world No. 3 and seeded the same at the Open, he reached the quarterfinals without dropping a set, and a four-set win over American John Isner put him back in the semifinals for the second straight year and third time in his career.
In the last four, he again faced Nadal, his opponent in all three of his Open semifinals. Nine years after his first US Open triumph, del Potro returned to the championship match in Flushing Meadows after Nadal retired due to a knee injury with del Potro leading two-sets-to-love.
He was beaten in the championship match by Djokovic in straight sets, 6-3, 7-6, 6-3, but with his second Grand Slam final, it seemed as though del Potro was well and truly back.
Fate had other ideas, though: fracturing his kneecap for the first time that fall in Shanghai, he'd play just seven tournaments from the fall of 2018 until he stepped on a match court against in Buenos Aires.
If there's one thing del Potro proved at the US Open, though, it's that his forehand was big, and his heart even bigger.
