TENNIS:THE HIP injury Ireland's top player, Conor Niland, had been managing for some years finally forced a closure to his tennis career yesterday.
The Irish number one since May 2010, Niland reached a career-high 129 in the world and achieved his main ambition last season when he played in the main draws at both Wimbledon and the US Open.
He was just a few games away from meeting Roger Federer on Centre Court last July and was then sick for his US Open debut in August after a bout of food poisoning in New York.
“I have been suffering from labral tears in both hip cartilages and this has resulted in pain and restricted movement for the past nine months,” he said.
“It was diagnosed 18 months ago. I was able to manage it but it was always an issue. I’d about five cortisones (injections) in it. It had become harder and harder to manage and a tough training day could put me out for a couple of days. I could hit okay for an hour or an hour and a half but to get points you have to win four or five matches. It just made no sense for me to continue.”
If Niland leaves a legacy in the Irish game it is the very real possibility for Irish players to make it into the Grand Slams if they have the right attitude.
Louk Sorensen also qualified for the Australian Open and Flushing Meadow but no Irish tennis player since Matt Doyle in the 1980s had been able to do that.
The 30-year-old Niland also played Davis Cup for Ireland and won three events on the ATP Challenger Tour, the most recent being the Salzburg Indoor Championships in November 2010. He also won five ITF Futures events.
Last year’s run to Wimbledon was historic as he was the first Irishman in more than a quarter of a century to make it to the All England club. His five-set loss in the first round to Adrian Mannarino deprived him of a match with Federer.
Despite the injury Niland then qualified for the US Open and faced the world number one Novak Djokovic in the first round before illness forced his retirement at the end of the second set.
“Surgery was one thing but I would have had to get surgery on both hips, which would have meant six to nine months off and at the end of it I’d have had no ranking. Ranking protection for injury isn’t what it seems to be,” he said. “Tennis is a ladder and you have to climb it and at the end of nine months I would have had no ranking. Made no sense.
“The two Slams are the things I look back on. When I was a kid, they were the ones you wanted to play in. Even in my 20s I wanted to and I am glad to have had the opportunity to have done that.”
Niland is from Limerick but is based in Dublin and his experience of how to earn ranking points and build a professional career is unmatched in Ireland.
Although James McGee stepped up last weekend in Cairo in the Davis Cup and now has a ranking in the 300s, the departure of the number one leaves a sizable hole at the top of the Irish game.
