Stefanos Tsitsipas has undergone surgery just two days after it was announced that he had joined the line-up for the Six Kings Slam. The Greek star entered the lucrative exhibition event in Saudi Arabia as a replacement for Jack Draper, who was forced to shut down his season with an arm injury.
But Tsitsipas himself is now in a race against time to recover in time for the Six Kings Slam, which kicks off on October 15 and offers a total prize pot of around £10m.
“I feel like I’m left without answers. I don’t know. I’ve tried everything. I’ve done an incredible job with my fitness,” Tsitsipas explained.
“I’ve done an incredible job with my physiotherapy, so I’ve maximised on everything that I possibly can do. Right now I’m just absolutely left with no answers. I don’t know what to do.
“It’s probably the most difficult situation that I’ve ever been faced with, because it’s an ongoing issue that doesn’t seem to be disappearing or fading off as much.
“Myself, as a person, I have a limit at some point, so I’ll definitely have to have my final answer on whether I want to do stuff or not in the next couple of months.
“This is going to be hard, but if I see it going in that trajectory, there is no point at competing. If I’m not healthy, and I’ve talked about health so many times, if health is not there, then your whole tennis life becomes miserable.”
But Tsitsipas finally appears to have found the answer after reportedly undergoing a colectomy at the Metropolitan Hospital in his home of Greece.
The world No. 27 has been given a recovery timeframe of two to six weeks, meaning he could still make it to the Six Kings Slam in Riyadh. Tsitsipas will bank £1.1m just for turning up and playing a match, while the winner gets a further £3.3m.
He has already withdrawn from next week’s ATP 500 event in Beijing, and may not make it to the Shanghai Masters, starting on October 1.
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Content Source: www.express.co.uk