Jamie Baker Retires – Can’t Afford The Tour

Written by: Staff on 1st July 2013

Jamie Baker Retires - Can't Afford The Tour

epa03284188 Jamie Baker of Britain returns to Andy Roddick of the US during their first round match for the Wimbledon Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, in London, Britain, 27 June 2012. EPA/FACUNDO ARRIZABALAGA |

Britain’s Jamie Baker, one of the most unfortunate but determined players ever to pick up a racket, has announced his retirement from the sport aged 26 years of age but he just cannot afford it anymore.

A life-long friend and contemporary of world no.2 and Davis Cup team-mate Andy Murray, Glasgow’s Baker, who nearly died in a Florida hospital five years ago after contracting the rare blood disease Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura and last year admitted to battling depression, has stoically fought on despite a loss of funding from the Lawn Tennis Association.

But after the Scot’s world ranking slipped outside the world’s top 300, and he lost in the Wimbledon qualifying rounds, Baker realized the time was right to set down his competitive racket.

“I have been strict with myself that I want to stop when I have a decision to make rather than tail away,” said Baker who has been Britain’s second ranked player behind Murray and made his ‘live rubber’ Davis Cup debut in the fierce surroundings of Buenos Aires and scored a notable win against Argentina’s Agustin Calleri.

“I have never found it hard to get up in the mornings and put in an honest day’s training but over the last six to 12 months I have found that a struggle.”

Baker’s decision was made in the knowledge his younger brother is making infinitely more money working in the financial sector. He realizes it is time to start making plans for the rest of his life but looked back on his tennis career, that saw him make several notable showings on the Challenger and Futures circuit and travel the world almost constantly, and had no regrets.

“I would not change any of it,” said Baker. “The education and the journey that this tennis life has given me has been incredible”

“One of the reasons I’ve come to this decision is that I feel that I have acquired so many different skills and assets to myself as a character that I can use in other areas now.”

Thinking back to his hospitalization in Florida during March 2008, Baker recalled: “I was told at one point for about a 24-hour period literally not to hold my breath for too long, let alone move because if a bleed started in my head, there’s nothing they could do.

“From that setback I actually came back about four years later and reached my highest ranking again. It’s hard to measure how much that process took out of me. It was incredible what I went through and the hardest time was actually afterwards and you just never know what sort of a toll that takes.”

©Daily Tennis News Wire

Topics: Andy Murray, British tennis news, Davis Cup, Jamie Baker, Lawn Tennis Association, Tennis News, Wimbledon