My Encounter with Del Potro

August twelfth, 2009 was a beautiful, sunny Wednesday morning in Canada. Since I was working at the Rogers Cup, I got access to the grounds and had specially requested Wednesday off so I could go see all the players’ practices. It was indeed a rich schedule with the most talented ten in action all the way through the day.

At eleven that morning, a pal and I walked over to Court 4 where the world’s top ranked player, Roger Federer, was due to get there at 11:30am. Already jam packed with about a few hundred people, there was very little room to move.

As the time approached, the court was filled with people who eagerly waited to get a glimpse of the Swiss Maestro. With the sun scorching at 95 degrees fahrenheit, we watched him warm up and we saw him hitting balls. To be truthful, it was quite boring and was scheduled to last 2 hours.

So, gradually, we squeeze outside the crowd and arrive at an open space. I look up at Court four on the opposite side to see a tall, lanky competitor dressed in a pink Nike T-shirt and white shorts hitting a few balls. I look closer and in fact came to see it was Juan Martin Del Potro.

As he came to the exit gate, there were 6 people waiting for him to have his autograph and he did sign. As he wrote on my picture and proceeded to my pal, I said “I wish you good luck in your competition later.”

Del Potro turned around and had a giant grin on his face and claimed “Thank you so very much for your support.” He seemed like he was extremely pleased with what I had said to him.

As he won the US Open this week, the irony of this situation just came to my mind. The fact that basically nobody was present to watch him and Federer had a ton of supporters. Every now and then, it’s better to be left alone than to be relentlessly followed.

Del Potro played a wonderful game this week and is completely worthy of his grand slam win. Well done!