Wimbledon 2015: Tommy Haas back on a high – but not Janko Tipsarevic

Haas had benign tumours on his left heel

Injury is the spectre that stalks every professional athlete. It is not the playing, though that is demanding enough, but the training: the hours of kicking balls, or hitting them, or bowling them, and the running, twisting and stretching. The human body was not designed for professional sports, even those, like Usain Bolt’s, that appear to be.

On Monday Wimbledon welcomed back two players who have suffered more than most: Tommy Haas and Janko Tipsarevic. Since Haas, now 37, has been on the circuit for 20 years, it is hardly surprising his body sometimes rebels, but it started breaking down in his 20s. That he has twice been named comeback player of the year says much. Shoulder injuries have been the big problem costing him the 2003 season, most of 2010 and last year.

The German returned to action earlier this month but is working his way back from 861st in the rankings. He played the Serb Dusan Lajovic, 25 years old today and one of those players who is established in the top 100 but struggling to crack the top 50.

Haas took the first two sets, 6-2, 6-3, but Lajovic came back to win the third 6-4. However, just as it seemed the stamina of Haas, much the elder and just off a long lay-off, would be tested, Lajovic suffered an ankle injury and needed a medical time-out. He resumed, but Haas took the set 6-2 and the match.

He is the oldest man to win a singles match at Wimbledon since a then-38-year-old Jimmy Connors in 1991.

Tipsarevic has been less injury prone than Haas, but when the curse struck it was severe. In January 2013 he fought his way into the fourth round of the Australian Open but suffered a foot injury and had to retire mid-match. As the season wore on he endured, he said later, “more than 200” anti-inflammatory injections before finally succumbing to surgery on what by then had been diagnosed as benign tumours in his left heel. That was in the autumn of 2013.

“It was a complicated operation, but everything went well,” he posted on Instagram. He added he could not wait to get back on court. It proved a long wait, 17 months. The operations had taken away “80 per cent of my sole”.

At his peak, in April 2012, Tipsarevic was eighth in the world, now he is 478th. Facing him was Marcel Granollers, of Spain, world No 72, but once a top-20 player himself.

The pair found themselves on court seven, next to the Pergola Cafe with its constant stream of passing visitors. Those that stayed, their attention perhaps drawn by the Spaniard yelling with each shot, saw the rustiness of Tipsarevic betray him. Emblematic was the final shot, with the Serb sending a loose forehand into the tramlines to go down 6-3, 6-4, 6-2.

“My goal and dream would be to come back to the top 10,” Tipsarevic, 31 last week, said when he returned in March. That looks a long way off.