Tennis Betting: The best and worst comebacks
Wonderful World of Tennis
/
Sean Calvert /
07 October 2010 /
1
Bjorn Borg's comeback was one of the most ill-fated, the once great Swede still playing with a wooden racket and unable to compete with his opponents' new-found power
"Perhaps the most memorable and undoubtedly the worst tennis comeback
of all time was the ill-advised return of legendary Swede Bjorn Borg,
who like George Best in football, retired criminally early."
From Kim Clijsters' incredible back-to-back US Open wins after coming out of retirement to Bjorn Borg's painful efforts on his return, Sean Calvert discusses the best and the worst...
Kim Clijsters showed the tennis world that having time off to have a child hasn't had any noticeable effect on her ability and results on the WTA Tour, with two consecutive US Open wins since coming out of retirement.
But many others have not been so successful. Here, we take a look at some of tennis's best and worst comebacks.
Perhaps the most memorable and undoubtedly the worst tennis comeback of all time was the ill-advised return of legendary Swede Bjorn Borg, who like George Best in football, retired criminally early.
Borg had had enough of the tour by 1983 and quit at the age of 26, having racked up 11 Grand Slam titles and 64 tour titles in all.
He played just one event in 1982 and officially retired in January the following year, but went on to play Monte Carlo that year andStuttgart in 1984 - two of his last three losses were to Henri Leconte.
His return in 1991 at the age of 34 also came at Monte Carlo, with a first round loss to Jordi Arrese. The Swede went on to play a total of 12 events, losing in the first round in each and every one before hanging his racquet up for good as far as the main tour is concerned, after losing to Alexander Volkov in Moscow in November 1993.
Those who witnessed the former maestro were saddened to see him stuck in a bygone era, still playing with a wooden racquet in an age of newmetal technology and being out-hit and beaten by very average opponents.
John McEnroe officially retired from the main tour in 1992, (after several earlier hiatus's) but like Borg, couldn't resist another pop at it just over a year later in 1994.
A first round loss to Sweden's Magnus Gustafsson in the first round of the indoor event in Rotterdam in February 1994 convinced Mac that enough was enough and he never played another singles match on the ATP Tour.
However, the comebacks didn't end there, as he came back to the tour for the final time 12 years later at the age of 46 and won the doubles title in San Jose with Jonas Bjorkman, a win which meant that Mac won doubles titles in four different decades.
One of the more bizarre comeback efforts was that of Hall of Famer Ilie Nastase, who after finally retiring at the age of 39 in October 1985 went on to come out of retirement for a challenger almost three years later.
Nastase played Kevin Moir of South Africa in Dijon, France in June 1988 at the age of 41 - he lost in the first round.
And the Romanian's old nemesis, Stan Smith, was another who still thought he could cut it with the youngsters into his tennis dotage.
The American former Wimbledon and US Open champ lost 11 of 12 matches in a two-year period at the end of his career - the last of them at the age of 38.
Probably the greatest tennis comeback of all time would have to be that of Margaret Court, who retired aged just 24.
Court already had 13 Grand Slam titles, but then married and moved back to her native Australia in 1966 before returning in 1969 to win the Australian Open, French Open and the US Open that year.
She then went on to achieve a Grand Slam the very next year before retiring again to have her first child, who was born in 1972.
Court then came back again and won three of the four slams in 1973 before retiring in 1977 whilst pregnant with her fourth child.
A quite incredible set of stats there from Margaret Court, but perhaps a more emotional return to the tennis court was that of Monica Seles, who was forced off the tour after being stabbed by a crazed Steffi Graf fan.
The incident occurred on court in Hamburg in 1993 and forced Seles out of the game for two years before her comeback in Canada in 1995.
The highlight of her return was winning the Australian Open in 1996 and the nine time Grand Slam winner retired for good in 2008, although she didn't play competitively for five years from 2003 to her retirement.
One of Seles's peers in the women's game at that time was the youngest ever top 10 ranked player.
Jennifer Capriati cracked the top 10 aged just 14 and won Olympic gold at 16, but unsurprisingly she was burned out by age 17 and retired for 14 months in 1994.
Arrests for shoplifting and possession of marijuana followed prior to her comeback in 1996 when she fought her way back inside the world's top 25 before going on to win the Australian Open and French Open in 2001.
She ended that year as world number one, but injuries meant that Capriati hasn't played since 2004, but she never officially retired from the game.
So, I think it's fair to conclude that even today, Clijsters has proven that it's possible to reach the very top of the women's game after retirement, but the same cannot be said of the men.
Does that expose a lack of depth and quality in the women's game at the top level? That debate is for another time, but Juan Martin Del Potro has showed in the last fortnight, how tough it is to comeback after many months, yet alone years out of the game.
You could point to Andre Agassi and Goran Ivanisevic, both of whom scored fabulous comeback Grand Slams wins, but neither of them had retired beforehand - they had slipped down the rankings but were still active.
Many overlook the fact that Goran had played 13 events in 2001 before winning Wimbledon and that Agassi played for all but four months and reached the last 16 of the US Open in 1997 - the year he slipped to
number 141 in the rankings.
Lets see how Del Potro fares over the next few months of his comeback.
My guess is it will be next summer before he's back to his very best,
but one thing's for sure. He won't beat Margaret Court.
imbythesea | 08 October 2010
Delighted to see Margaret Court getting recognition for the greatest ever comeback in tennis. She is so rarely given credit for her incredible achievements in the game.