Denis Shapovalov hasn't had a spectacular year so far winning only 13 matches and an injury had a lot do to with that.
Shapovalov has been up and down for much of his career so that part of the equation is quite clear. The other part that wasn't clear is the fact that the Canadian has been dealing with an injury that significantly affected the way he was able to play on the ATP Tour recently.
There has only been a handful of events where he scored two or more wins this year. He did it in Adelaide, the Australian Open, the French Open, and now Wimbledon. That's all of it and outside a few solid wins, it's been mostly a poor year.
Wimbledon has arguably been his best event of the year and even there things didn't go smoothly. He was looking really solid against Roman Safiullin who is a player that can be tough to beat but certainly not unbeatable. After the match, the Canadian voiced his frustration with his season and injury in particular.
Got a lot of thoughts. Yeah, I mean, don't want to take anything away from Roman, first of all. I think he played really, really well. Obviously he's liking the grass a lot. I think he served and return and everything was really good from him today.
Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, hopefully I can get healthy soon. Hopefully I can solve the problem with the knee. Yeah, try to fix it. Happy it didn't flare up in the first round, but at the same time, it's difficult to play tennis when, yeah, when I had the issue that I have.
It's not an injury that prevents him from playing but it's mostly giving him chronic soreness with affects the way he plays. When it comes to this match in particular he felt more tired in his muscles and in a sport where reaction time matters, that's a big no-no.
Yeah, I mean, I felt sore the whole time. But actually, yeah, I was getting more tired in the glutes and around the knee, the quads and everything, from the beginning of the match. It was getting worse and worse.
I think as soon as like, yeah, as soon as other parts get tired, just have more and more impact on the knee. Yeah, as the match went on, it just became unbearable, yeah.