Pablo Carreno Busta is certain that the new tennis balls had something to do with his injury that kept him away from tennis for much of this year.
Pablo Carreno Busta played only five matches this year having a record of 1-4 so far and much of that had to do with his injury. The Spaniard returned recently at the Alicante ATP Challenger losing his first match in 8 months.
His last match before returning to Alicante happened back in February when he lost to Richard Gasquet in Rotterdam. Carreno Busta, who peaked at number 10 on the ATP Rankings, attempted multiple comebacks, but none succeeded as the injury reappeared every time.
It's very similar to the elbow issue Stefanos Tsitsipas had, which didn't get fixed until he underwent surgery. Carreno Busta's elbow injury completely drained him mentally, as he revealed in a recent interview with Punto de Break.
I have been recovering and it seemed like I was going well, but then it got worse and I had to stop again. It has been especially hard mentally because it seemed like I would be able to compete and then I wouldn’t. I tried to come back in Indian Wells, then come back in Madrid, then in Winston-Salem, and in the end, it was last week (at the Alicante Ferrero Challenger).
On another note, the Spaniard provided his thoughts on the new tennis balls, which he firmly blames for his injuries, and it's not a new thing. Several players talked about elbow issues, and it's not getting better because more players keep talking about it recently.
I’m sure the balls have something to do with my injury. For example, before Roland Garros I was training with some balls at the Academy to recover from the injury and it was going well, I was playing sets, and I switched to the Roland Garros balls to start training with them and after 20 minutes I had to stop because It (the elbow) had become inflamed again. It is clear that the balls are very different, and the continuous change of balls has an influence.
Last week we played with one brand, this week we played with another… On the Challenger circuit it is even worse because more are changed, but on the ATP circuit a lot of balls are also changed. We don’t even do two tournaments with practically the same ones. On the same Australian or clay court tour you can change the brand of balls. This influences more injuries.
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