Tennis news | Pat Rafter Happy Slam podcast interview, Wimbledon comeback bid after retirement
Australian tennis legend Pat Rafter has opened up on the day he decided to call time on his illustrious career amid a Wimbledon comeback attempt in 2002.
Rafter was plagued by injuries towards the end of his career and wound up playing his last career match in the Davis Cup final in 2001, but had briefly been talked into returning for Wimbledon the following year before backflipping on the decision.
“2002 was when Roachy (Rafter’s coach Tony Roche) came to me and said, ‘Want to get ready for Wimbledon’, and I said, ‘Not really, but come on, let’s do it’,” Rafter told Wide World of Sports’ The Happy Slam podcast.
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“I was hitting every day with Roachy and then on the fifth (day), I rang him up and said, ‘I’m not coming in’.”
“I said, ‘I just don’t want to do it. I know I don’t want to do it’. I gave it a bit of a shot for those four days. And then I knew that I didn’t want to be there anymore.”
Rafter said his body felt “terrible” towards the back end of his career as he hobbled around his apartment in an attempt to get warmed up.
“I guess I saw a bigger picture as well. I thought there’s more to life than this and I’ve got so much out of it. I’m so happy,” he added.
“And yeah, I missed the big moments for the first year or two (after retiring). I missed the Davis Cup finals. I miss playing grand slams. But I did not miss the training and I didn’t miss the travel. I didn’t miss a lot of things as well.
“But to get to those really exciting moments, you have to do that grind and I wasn’t prepared to do it. When you don’t want to do that grind of the smaller stuff you can’t ever expect to be in a big match situation.
“So for me, in a way it was easy and I transitioned out of the sport very easily as well because I had a family as well and I wanted to be part of my family. I didn’t want to be that selfish person anymore.
“It’s so easy to be that when you from the sport, it’s all about me and you got to break that down very quickly. A lot of sports people don’t have that sort of motivation to move away or to not be about them.”
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When asked about the major regrets from his career, Rafter recalled his loss to Pete Sampras in the 2000 Wimbledon final, which he called “a really big choke”.
“I didn’t really choke with Goran (in the 2001 Wimbledon final) (but) with Sampras I gagged really badly against the situation. I remember it very well,” he recalled.
“And then the Davis Cup final against France in my last year and the last match as we played. If things played out a bit differently or hindsight’s a beautiful thing, but are three things I would love to have have had won Wimbledon, at least under my belt and the Davis Cup.”
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