American Tennis Needs Fish Now

Written by: Bob Larson Tennis on 14th August 2013

ATP tennis tournament in Washington, DC.

American Tennis Needs Fish Now

epa03809162 USA's Mardy Fish returns to France's Julien Benneteau during their men's singles match at the Citi Open ATP tennis tournament in Washington, DC, USA, 31 July 2013. EPA/SHAWN THEW |

American tennis appears to need Mardy Fish like never before after the ignominy of not having a solitary player ranked inside the ATP World Tour’s top 20 and being faced with the scenario of John Isner being the only competitor from the United States seeded in the men’s singles at the upcoming US Open.

But the 31 year-old former member of the top ten from Minnesota, who has been struggling with heart-related anxiety issues for the past 17 months and has only played eight matches on the ATP World Tour this year, maintains he is unsure of his long-term commitment to tennis.

Exactly two years ago Fish was ranked a career high world no.7 but unsurprisingly given his competitive inactivity, has seen his ranking plummet to 129th position. He currently plans to contest the Open in New York but said: “I think there’s going to be some sort of assessment period, maybe after the US Open where I’ll kind of see and feel how far away I am to where I want to be.

“With all these problems that I had health-wise, I left the game in the top 10 in the world, and that’s pretty hard to deal with. It was very, very hard to get there and to stay there for a while, to make the ATP World Tour Finals and to do all those cool things.

“So it’s been very hard and very challenging to know that I had really no control over it. And sort of here we sit 12 months out, 12 months away from playing really good tennis, some of the best tennis of my career, and doing well in most tournaments, and now I sit out in the first round in one of my favorite events, one of my best events, so that will challenge you mentally for sure.”

Fish maintains his confidence in his health is much stronger than when he was forced to withdraw from last year’s US Open, prior to his fourth-round match against Roger Federer. But he insists there is still a lot more improvement required.

His mind seemed to flash back to the trauma of the onset of the problem when he awoke in the middle of the night with his heart racing at the Miami Masters series event in March 2012, and he said: “It’s gotten miles and miles better than it was 12 months ago. I’ll never forget it. I just can’t wait to sort of just forget, and five years down the road, whatever I’m doing at the time, I can’t even remember that.

“It’s never going to happen. I can’t ever forget what I went through. It’s been a very slow process. It’s very hard to come back.”