Sebastian Korda missed a lot of time this year with a wrist problem, and he spoke a bit about it after his win over Ben Shelton at the 2023 Shanghai Masters.
Sebastian Korda might be playing his best tennis this year, and it's interesting that it comes nearly 9 months after he played on a similar level. He started the season in Adelaide, pushing Novak Djokovic really hard in the final and nearly winning that match.
He then had an amazing time in Melbourne downing Medvedev en route to the second week, where he unfortunately had to retire with a wrist injury. It didn't come quickly because he actually started feeling his wrist at the end of last year but it did surprise him because he never had any problem with his wrist before.
Yeah, my injury actually started last year, probably like around this time. I was battling with a wrist, then it was okay, then it got progressively worse during the training block right before the Australian Open. I played in Adelaide, it was okay.
As I started playing best-of-five, a lot of matches, against a lot of really big servers, especially going to the forehand, yeah, it was difficult, it started hurting a lot.
After that unfortunate conclusion to his Australian Open, Korda took 3 months to really get back, and it mostly had to do with the fact that he had to sort of re-learn everything that he did. It was quite a tough time for Korda, who dealt with a lot of wrist pain.
Then, it was just a super long journey from there. I was out for three months, and just had to re-learn, basically, all the tennis stuff that I did, especially with the wrist. I was, basically, every single practice, every single forehand that I hit, I was kind just praying that it would stop hurting, and it just never would.
He admitted recently that he still has issues with the wrist and confirmed it once more after the win over Shelton. He thinks it will go away as he gets more reps with his forehand, but we know the story. Wrists and elbows have been a topic this year with the tennis balls, and it's not going to go away on his own. Is that to blame with Korda? We don't know, but it might be.