Former World No. 5 Tommy Robredo announced on Thursday that he plans to retire from professional tennis after the upcoming Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell, the ATP 500 event taking place from 16 to 24 April, bringing an end to a 23-year career.

The player from Hostalric in Catalonia, Spain, who turns 40 in May, will leave behind him one of the best careers in his nation’s recent tennis history. Holder of 12 ATP Tour titles, a seven-time Grand Slam quarter-finalist and member of the winning Davis Cup teams of 2004, 2008 and 2009, he will not be easily forgotten on the ATP Tour.

“I’ve known I was going to retire for a while, but the pandemic put everything back,” Robredo explained in conversation with Spanish news agency EFE. The Spaniard, who currently sits at No. 343 in the ATP Rankings, was joined at the announcement of his retirement by his good friend David Ferrer, director of the Barcelona tournament. “I wanted both my friends and family to be there on the day of my retirement.”

The Catalan will be bidding to bring his career to a magical end at a venue that has been special to him throughout. Robredo won in Barcelona in 2004 and reached the final in 2006, and is looking forward to one last meeting with the fans that turn out to say goodbye to one of the Tour’s most-respected players. “It will be spectacular to see my friends at [the Barcelona tournament],” said Robredo, who spent over 100 weeks in the Top 10 from 2006 to 2007. “You recognise their voices and it’ll be a magical feeling.”

After more than two decades competing professionally, the time to start a new chapter has arrived for Robredo. He welcomed his first child in March 2021 and has an exciting future to look forward to.

“Now it will be time to dedicate myself to my family, especially my daughter,” said Robredo. “Until now I’ve never had anything more fulfilling than tennis, but now I’ve found it. I want to be at home with my family and my daughter. Now I know that I don’t want to miss the first time she walks or says ‘papa’.

“I’m an old school warrior,” added the Spaniard, who played in the 2006 Tennis Masters Cup, as the Nitto ATP Finals was then known. “I’ve really looked after myself and I’ve stayed relatively free from injuries. I’ve been able to keep playing because I love tennis and I don’t struggle to get up in the mornings to go and train. Until the day we had to isolate, I gave it 100%.

With almost 900 matches under his belt and a well-known determination to succeed, Robredo will walk away having maintained his work ethic until his final day on Tour. The Spaniard has only played two official matches in 2022 after several seasons competing on the ATP Challenger Tour but is still putting in the hard work for an emotional goodbye in Barcelona. “I want to be competitive on the day of my retirement,” he said.

“I have no plans afterwards, but another phase will come, and it will certainly involve tennis,” added Robredo. “I will do something that excites me, and I can dedicate myself to with the same passion I have put into tennis.

“It’s not hard or difficult for me. I’m doing it because I want to and it’s time. I’ve been doing this for many years, since I was a little boy. I’ve given my all.”

Editor’s Note: This story first appeared on ATPTour.com/es

Italian Matteo Berrettini withdrew from the Miami Open presented by Itau on Thursday evening due to a right hand injury. The fourth seed will be replaced by a lucky loser, who will play Argentine Juan Manuel Cerundolo, who eliminated Serbian Dusan Lajovic 6-3, 7-5 in the first round.

Berrettini is 9-6 on the season, with his most recent appearance coming at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, where he lost against Serbian Miomir Kecmanovic in the fourth round after defeating Holger Rune and Lloyd Harris.

The Italian’s best result of the season came at the Australian Open, where he eliminated reigning Intesa Sanpaolo Next Gen ATP Finals champion Carlos Alcaraz and ousted two former Top 10 players — Pablo Carreno Busta and Gael Monfils — en route to the semi-finals.

The 25-year-old is a two-time Nitto ATP Finals competitor who has won five ATP Tour titles. However, he will have to wait to pursue his first ATP Masters 1000 trophy.

It has been more than nine months since we last saw Dominic Thiem on court. The Austrian star suffered a right wrist injury during the grass-court swing last year and has been fighting to return to action ever since.

That long wait is finally over. On Thursday, the Austrian announced that he will take a wild card into the AnyTech365 Andalucia Open, an ATP Challenger Tour event in Marbella, Spain. The Challenger 125-level tournament will start on Monday.

“I want to start getting contact with the competition after all these months and I believe this is the right way to start,” said Thiem on Instagram. “It’s been a very, very tough period for me and to go back to competition is what I have been waiting for so long and as you know I had a lot of setbacks. I know this will be a slow process of getting back to the top level, but I am ready to work hard and start humble.”

Thiem joins fellow former World No. 3 Stan Wawrinka as main draw wild cards. The tournament revealed Wawrinka’s participation on Monday. It marks the first time that two former Top 3 players will compete at the same Challenger event.

Thiem was last seen at the Mallorca Championships in June, when he retired from his first-round match against Adrian Mannarino with the wrist injury. Wawrinka, meanwhile, suffered a foot injury in March 2021 and has not played since the Qatar ExxonMobil Open.

Hi everyone, I wanted to let you know that I will be playing this upcoming week a tournament in Marbella, Spain. I want to start getting contact with the competition after all these months and I believe this is the right way to start.

Full statement:https://t.co/RADV7mgBFU pic.twitter.com/1Tapwgpi69

— Dominic Thiem (@domithiem) March 24, 2022

The World No. 1 of five years ago will take on the World No. 1 of five days ago when Andy Murray meets Daniil Medvedev in the second round of the Miami Open presented by Itau.

The Briton set up the marquee matchup with a 7-6(4), 6-1 win over Federico Delbonis Thursday at Hard Rock Stadium. In what he described as slow and bouncy conditions, Murray lifted his game after taking the tie-break, racing to the finish after an instant break in the second.

“It was difficult for me, especially in the first set,” Murray said post-match. “It was a really tight first set, but I did well in the end.”

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There was nothing to choose between the two men in an opening stanza that did not feature a break point, nor a single deuce game.

That trend continued in the tie-break, as the first nine points went on serve to leave Murray leading, 5/4. The Briton then won a long rally when Delbonis found the net, and won the set on the Argentine’s fourth double fault.

“Both of us served very well in the first set,” Murray added. “I just managed to catch a really good return there at 5/4 in the tie-break, a really deep return and managed to get that point. He double faulted on the set point and that was the key to the match right there.”

With the lead in hand, Murray stepped up his aggression on the return in set two and was rewarded with an instant break. He then escaped 0/30 to consolidate, winning points from the net and the baseline as he began to take control of the match.

Murray’s domination in the second was summed up in the final two points of the match, as he earned the victory with his third break of the stanza. A cat-and-mouse exchange ended with Murray floating a lob winner off a stabbed volley to bring up match point. He took the direct route on match point, firing a forehand return winner down the line.

Career win No.701…

2x Miami champion @andy_murray defeats Delbonis 7-6(4) 6-1 to set up a second-round meeting with Medvedev!#MiamiOpen pic.twitter.com/29hFnnkP9x

— Tennis TV (@TennisTV) March 25, 2022

The two-time Miami champ levels their ATP Head2Head at 1-1 after a 2016 loss in Indian Wells which was decided in a third-set tie-break.

Murray will seek to level at 1-1 against Medvedev in the second round. The World No. 2 defeated Murray in 2019 in Brisbane in straight sets.

“Obviously a tough match,” Murray previewed. “He’s played extremely well on the hard courts the last few seasons. He deserves to be right up there at the top of the game.

“It’ll be a big challenge for me, it’ll be a great test. I’ve got a big training block after this tournament, and it’ll be a really good test for where my game’s at and things I need to work on as well against him. So I’m looking forward to that.”

Also in late Thursday action, Tommy Paul defeated Benjamin Bonzi, 6-4, 6-4 on Grandstand, setting up a second-round meeting with 23rd seed Karen Khachanov. Miomir Kecmanovic closed out play on Court Butch Buchholz with a 7-6(3), 6-4 win over American qualifier Jack Sock, advancing to face seventh seed Felix Auger-Aliassime.

France’s Arthur Rinderknech was a late winner on Court 5, knocking off Laslo Djere, 6-2, 7-6(6). He’ll face eighth seed Hubert Hurkacz next, with the first round now complete.

If Daniil Medvedev reaches the semi-finals of the Miami Open presented by Itau, he will reclaim the No. 1 spot in the ATP Rankings from Novak Djokovic. But the 26-year-old says he will not lose any sleep over it.

“It’s not something that stays in my mind nonstop. I’m not going to bed saying, ‘How could I lose it, how can I get it back?’” Medvedev said. “But I know the mathematics, read them all over the place a little bit, and it’s kind of the same like in Indian Wells.”

The four-time ATP Masters 1000 champion had an opportunity to keep World No. 1 following the BNP Paribas Open, but he lost in the third round against Gael Monfils. He is more concerned with his performance than his ATP Ranking.

“I didn’t manage to play my best there, so that’s why I lost. That’s why I lost the No. 1 spot. If I manage to play good tennis here, I think I have my chances of getting it back. But I want to try my best every day [in] every practice, every match. If it’s going to be No. 2, it’s going to be No. 2. If it’s going to be No. 5, then it is what it is,” Medvedev said. “I just want to do my best, which I tried to do in Indian Wells and here I have to do better if I want to get it back.”

Medvedev has excelled on quicker courts throughout his career, winning the Nitto ATP Finals on indoor hard in 2020 and capturing his first major title at last year’s US Open. The Sunshine Double, Indian Wells and Miami, is played on outdoor hard courts, which Medvedev says have not been the quickest.

“In my opinion, the surface, both Indian Wells and Miami, which I think is usually similar, has been really slow and like really slow, like one of the slowest hard courts,” Medvedev said. “I made some adjustments compared to Indian Wells, and I feel like I’m playing much better.

“When you play [a] Masters 1000, you play tough opponents. Even if you are playing them better, [that] doesn’t mean you’re going to beat everybody, so I’m practising hard, working hard on my game, and will try to be better than I was in Indian Wells.”

It will not be easy from the first round, as Medvedev will play former World No. 1 Andy Murray or Federico Delbonis, who was seeded in Indian Wells. But the top seed takes comfort in how he feels at Hard Rock Stadium, where he made the quarter-finals last year.

“Miami, I usually play a little bit better [than Indian Wells]. And when I came, I felt like my game was not there yet, so I tried to make some adjustments with my coach,” Medvedev said. “We were talking a lot to see how can I play better in the conditions we have here.”

According to Medvedev, the ball would fluff up quickly at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. But he feels he has adapted well in South Florida. How so?

“I want to be honest, I won’t share my secrets,” Medvedev said. “But I feel like we have done good adjustments and I’m ready to play good.”