After Battling Injuries, Healthy Tursunov Looks For Another Run

Dmitry Tursunov could retire right now and know he’s enjoyed a career many can only wish they’d experienced. A brief bio: 14 ATP World Tour singles and doubles titles; a career-high No. 20 in the Emirates ATP Rankings; and a doubles semi-finals showing at this week’s Grand Slam, Roland Garros.

But Tursunov, who will turn 34 in December, also knows if he left now, after 30 years of playing tennis and multiple injuries that have hampered his career, he might wonder if he had a few more matches or titles in him. He might think he left too soon.

“I’ve already played tennis for 30 years of my life, so I want to use up whatever time I have left. If it’s going to be one year, it’s going to be one year. If it’s going to be two years, it’s going to be two years,” Tursunov said in April in Houston. “But in 10-15 years, I really don’t want to sit back and look and say, ‘OK, I should have played for one more year or I should have played for two more years.’”

The Russian is scheduled to play in his 12^th Roland Garros singles main draw this week when he opens against 14^th seed Roberto Bautista Agut. In Paris, Tursunov, a 17-year tour veteran, will look to take full advantage of his experience to produce another run on tour.

“I see tennis a little bit more as a chess game versus when I was younger it was more physical, just hitting the ball, whether you make the shot or don’t make the shot,” he said. “Now I see a little bit more of the tactical things, and I like to explore it.”

A lack of strategy hasn’t been Tursunov’s problem. Rather, injuries have slowed the right-hander throughout his career.

In 2000, the year he turned pro, Tursunov broke his left leg and missed five months. Two years later, a back injury sidelined him for half the year. But in 2003, Tursunov, at the age of 20, cracked the Top 100 of the Emirates ATP Rankings. Three years later, he had his first tour-level title, beating Tomas Berdych in the final in Mumbai. That same year, Tursunov also finished in the Top 25 for the first time. He’d hover around the Top 30 and win at least one title for the next three years.

Toward the end of 2009, however, the injuries would return. During the next two years, he’d undergo three surgeries on his left ankle. By 2011, his ranking would slip to No. 197.

In typical Tursunov fashion, though, he was back inside the Top 30 in 2013. As a qualifier, he reached the quarter-finals of the Western & Southern Open, the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 tournament in Cincinnati. Tursunov beat then-World No. 4 David Ferrer before losing to World No. 7 Juan Martin del Potro in three sets.

Yet just when the Moscow native was again making strides, plantar fasciitis and a combination of injuries bothered him on and off again for the next three years. “You go through a few hiccups and stutter steps and you have some new injuries that come up because you haven’t been playing a lot,” he said. “You try to play at the same level or at the same speed that you know you should be playing. and your body is just not quite ready. It takes a while for it to adapt to stress.”

The stop-and-go nature of rehab also challenged him mentally. “You have to be not only patient but also determined to keep going,” he said. “A lot of times when you’re coming back it’s pretty tough psychologically. Physically, you feel like you’re just 10,000 years old.”

But Tursunov also said he’s learned from his time off the court. He’s thought of things he would have done differently when he was younger. He plans to pass that insight along to the next generation of players.

“If I had the opportunity to travel with a physio from an early age maybe it would be different, maybe it wouldn’t be,” he said. “I could have maybe not played the tournaments that I might have played when I was feeling like I’m hurting, and I felt like I was a gladiator and going through all this pain, and it was a good thing.

“But in the end it doesn’t really matter, the best that I can do with that knowledge of my past mistakes is to pass that knowledge along.”

Tursunov, the son of a former engineer turned tennis coach, talks about coaching some day and putting his years of experience to use. But he has something else on his mind at the moment, something he’d like to happen at Roland Garros and for the remainder of the season.

“I think nowadays more than anything,” he said, “it’s important for me to be able to play relatively injury free.”