JOHANNESBURG - South Africa’s Kevin Anderson has hailed the decision on Wednesday to cancel this year’s edition of Wimbledon - one of the four tennis Grand Slam events.
Organisers were forced to cancel the grass-court event which was scheduled to start in July, due to the spread of Covid-19.
Anderson, a finalist at Wimbledon in 2018, said: “Wimbledon always gives me so many great memories. The grass season will definitely be missed but the most important thing right now for us to focus on is that we’re all staying healthy and safe at home.”
The 33-year-old was scheduled to return to action at the Monte Carlo Masters this month after having knee surgery in February, but all tennis events in the immediate future have been cancelled.
“My recovery’s gone great. I think it’s been really successful so far. I probably would have been ready for Monte-Carlo and the clay-court season,” Anderson told ATPTour.com.
“Obviously that’s not going to happen anymore, so we had to readjust and now I’ll be at home and I feel like the toughest part of getting over the surgery and recovery has been done.”
%%%twitter https://twitter.com/Wimbledon?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Wimbledon. The grass season will definitely be missed but the most important thing right now for us to focus on is that we’re all staying healthy and safe at home. pic.twitter.com/Btlu9rMfDc
— Kevin Anderson (@KAndersonATP)
Anderson, a former world number five as recently as 2018, has dropped to 123rd on the ATP rankings due to his injury battles.
“I feel quite confident where I am right now and I can maintain as much as I can while not being able to train properly and hopefully things settle down and it’s more safe to go outside, I’ll be able to resume and get back with things.
“After my last tournament [at the New York Open] it seemed just going on like this wouldn’t make the most sense. But for the whole time I was in Australia and New York, I was told there was a chance I didn’t need the surgery, so I was a little bit unlucky that in the end I needed it, and that’s why I decided to get it done.”
Anderson first reached the top 10 in the world in 2015, before he slipped back to 80th as injury struck. Returning stronger and better, however, seems to be a recurring theme for the US Open (2017) and Wimbledon (2018) finalist.
“Each setback or obstacle is unique and you need to approach it differently. But having that experience in the past will help. Obviously now it’s two things: ‘A’ was getting over my surgery, which I feel I was doing a really good job with. [Then] we are faced with a sort of unprecedented time and obviously just like a lot of other players have expressed, the concern is more for globally getting this under control for many people. I think it’s bigger than our sport right now.”