Janko Tipsarevic notched his first win in three years at a major on Tuesday when he defeated No. 29-seeded American Sam Querrey, 7-6(4), 6-7(0), 6-3, 6-3. It might as well have been three decades. That’s how long Tipsarevic’s journey has felt like to a man who suffered a foot injury and then so many complications in the prime of his career.
“I had a very turbulent career, you know,” Tipsarevic said. “Good junior, bad junior, great junior, good senior, bad senior, up and down, up and down. I never had a comeback. I was, up until 2013, generally a very healthy player.”
He was also generally a very good player, particularly in 2012, when he won 57 matches, reached four finals and notched a win over world No. 1 Novak Djokovic. But the following year a freak foot injury pulled Tipsarevic far from his potential. It eventually—after he spent several months trying to continue on painkillers and prayers—pulled him from the game, and three surgeries and three years later, the Serb, now 32, is finally beginning to feel that he can play the game the way he used to.
“Being mobile like I was in my prime was the toughest thing,” Tipsarevic said. “A big part of that is my new fitness coach, Professor Dusch Covilic, who is a professor of biomechanics. We are working on very specific movements. He has helped me a lot to improve my defense. We have only been working for a month, so he hasn't had a lot of time. I am injury-free for quite a while now, so I am finally starting to feel confidence in my body to defend in some of the more crucial moments of the match.”
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Since 2013, Tipsarevic has only earned five tour-level wins, but after a Challenger title in China a few weeks ago, he says he’s getting some confidence back.
“I know this sounds very bad, but I was really having bad draws,” Tipsarevic said. “Even challengers, I was playing against like first round Jiri Vesely, who beat Djokovic in Monte-Carlo… On big events I end up playing first round Raonic, first round Cilic, first round Simon, guys who even if I'm playing well I don't like playing. I feel like I needed a few of the wins to get the confidence back. I was even offered to play a wild card [at the Challenger], I refused, I wanted to grind and win my way through quallies. So it really did help a lot.”
Next up Tipsarevic will face Spain’s Pablo Carreno Busta of Spain. It’s a an opportunity for another big win, no doubt, but the Serb still seems to think he’ll need to wait to next season to reach the fullest of his potential.
“Hopefully I will be the old Janko next year at the Australian Open,” he said. “I mean, only in the last three or four weeks I'm able to do stuff even on fitness without thinking what might happen with the knee or with the hip or with the foot or whatever. So this gives me a lot of confidence towards the end of the year where I'm highly motivated to hopefully make enough points not to be needing wild cards or protected rankings for next year.”
