South Africa’s Wayne Ferreira, the former world number six and who holds the record for the most consecutive Grand Slam tournaments played, admitted Saturday that retirement has been hard.
The 35-year-old, an Australian Open semifinalist in 1992 and 2003, called it a day on the ATP Tour at the 2004 US Open.
But such is his urge to compete that Ferreira has been tempted to pick up a racquet again and play on the seniors tour.
”Retirement has been tough,” said the California resident.
”I focused a lot on bringing up my two boys (aged two-and-a-half, and seven), but it’s two years since I retired now and I’ve been a bit bored.
”You are so driven when you play tennis, and then when you retire, after you’ve taken your kids to school, and if you don’t really have anything to do, it’s tough.
”Tennis is one of those things that gives you such great self-fulfillment — you can’t get it anywhere else. Even in business I don’t think people get it. But I was glad that I gave up tennis because I didn’t want to have to practice three hours a day, travel every week and have that grind.”
When Ferreira burst on the scene by reaching the 1992 Australian Open semifinals, there were those that predicted he would be a senior world number one within five years.
But he admits that he didn’t quite live up to those lofty expectations, and now knows the reason why.
”When I started out my goals were perhaps unrealistic — I wanted to win every tournament that I played,” he told www.mltourofchampions.com.
”Maybe I should have played a little less and said: ‘I only want to win the Grand Slams and I only want to win the Masters Series’.
I travelled a lot, played too much, and when I got to the Grand Slams I was often tired.”
He highlights his five-set quarterfinal defeat against Todd Martin at Wimnbledon in 1994, and five-set loss in the last eight of the US Open in 1992 as ones that got away, but he is still proud of his achievements.
”I trained as hard as anyone could and I did exceptionally well,” he added.
”I had a good career, it’s given me a good life, made me a lot of money, and I did a job that I wanted to do for 16 years. I had a lot of fun, made a lot of friends.”
Ferreira is convinced that he could still comfortably make the top 100 of the ATP Tour if he so desired, but the motivation simply isn’t there.
He is now happier trading blows with old rivals on the seniors tour, making his debut this week at Eindhoven in The Netherlands.
”When you go to Japan they write on your visa: ‘Entertainer’, and that’s what we need to realise — we are entertainers, people are paying a lot of money to watch us and we should try to give them as much entertainment as we can.” – Sapa-AFP