US tennis star wins first match back after 15 months out suffering injury hell

The tallest man to play on the ATP tour has made a winning return to action after hip surgery stalled his career for over 15 months. Reilly Opelka had not played an official match since the 2022 Wimbledon championships but he was back to winning ways on Tuesday after beating eighth seed Tennys Sandgren 6-4, 7-5 in the first round of the Charlottesville Challenger event.

The 6ft 11″ American reached a career-high ranking of world No. 17 in February 2022 and has won four ATP singles titles, but thanks to his lengthy lay-off is currently without a ranking.

Nicknamed ‘The Bot’ because of his devastating serving power, the 26-year-old had been expected to make his return to competitive tennis at UTS Frankfurt back in September, but had to withdraw after failing to recover in time from wrist surgery that he had received while out of action.

Speaking to Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS) at the time, he said: “I had a few setbacks along the way with this wrist surgery. So it’s just been up and down for a while, and I’m finally on the right path. I was telling [UTS player coordinator] Jeremy Chardy that if UTS was one week later, I would be able to play – or maybe two weeks later – I’m pretty confident I could play but I’m just not quite there yet.

“I still haven’t fully started serving yet. I think that’s the biggest thing right now, just having the confidence in my wrist to really swing hard at the serve. So that’s the only thing that’s delaying me further. I can do it, which is great, but the problem is after one or two days of intense serving, my wrist still gets a little irritated. So I’ve got to be a little careful.”

In the same interview, Opelka revealed that during his rehabilitation process, he was unable to move his arm for six months of the year as it was kept in a cast that ran past his elbow.

When he was finally able to remove the cast and recommence training he started with foam balls for the first two weeks and used a red dot training ball which is usually used by seven-year-olds who are learning the game.

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Opelka became Wimbledon junior champion in 2015 when he beat Mikael Ymer in the final. At 2m 11cm he is tied with Ivo Karlovic as the tallest-ever ATP-ranked player.

He won his first tour title at the New York Open in 2019, before going on to win the Delray Beach Open in Florida a year later. 2022 brought two more titles to Opelka at the Dallas Open and on clay in Houston before his troublesome hip brought his progress to a halt until now.

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