He looks happy to Diego Schwartzman. Quiet, sure of the decision he made last year to lower the curtain to his career in this Argentina Open 2025 and excited about the possibility of saying goodbye to tennis at home and in front of Argentine fans, with whom he built a very special relationship.
Nostalgia appears at times in his face when he remembers some moment lived on a court or a victory that marked him. But hearing it speak it is clear that the Little He is enjoying the previous debut on Tuesday before Nicolás Jarrythat he could end up being the last game of his professional career, and that, at 32, He is ready to hang the racket and start his life in the retirement.
“I never reversed it,” he says in a talk with Clarionsitting in a corner of Buenos Aires Lawn Tennis. “Moreover, when I made the decision, Buenos Aires was so far that I said ‘Uh, a lot still is missing’. But I prepared a long time before, even before announcing it, “he says. And for the entire process of recent months, In my head I already felt a former player. I also disputed very little tournaments since May last year, so the preparation was different. And I was already thinking what I’m going to do tomorrow. ”
-I had a particular moment in which you realized that it was time to stop?
-It was a process. It is much inside the bowels that one feels. I never get nervous on the days before tournaments, but 20 minutes before starts up the good adrenalide, wanting to enter and think I’m going to break in the first game. At the end of 2022, that I had a bad streak in the Indoor, that adrenaline made me wrong, it generated a lot of anxiety of not knowing what I was going to do, how I was going to answer, it made me perspire and lose control of the body. And that was transferred to performance: he played badly, he wasn’t well, he didn’t feel like training the next day. That was a period of months, one year, that I was processing it and I realized that I didn’t want anymore.
-The athletes often say that when they retire they feel illusion for what is coming and also fear. Do you have that mixture of emotions?
-Obvio, it’s normal. It is the natural process of any person who stops doing what he did all his life and sends himself to do other things. They are the fears of changing the routine, people who see every day. And it is a challenge that makes your life. I think they will come good things and I am very excited about what is coming.
-More beyond the professional projects you have, like radio. Is there any personal or anything you would like to do?
-The closest, in March I started the football tournament with my friends. I realized that I never had ankle boots. Bah, I had when I was little, at age six or seven. Then I never went to buy some ankle boots. And a couple of months ago I went to ski for the first time. And it looked like a ten -year -old baby, enjoying things that you could not do for not risking an injury. There are a lot of small simple things that I will start doing. And I’m going to have fun.
-How do you imagine life after tennis?
-Very Linda. With challenges of adapting. To move from that routine to prepare a suitcase to leave two months to stay longer at home. Get up and see that there are days that there will be more things to do and others in which not. Be here surrounded by your family and friends and stop missing things. It is changing the athlete’s chip and knowing that you are no longer. And start living sport differently.
Schwartzman had a great career. It became eight in the world. He won four titles, including this tournament in 2021. He was semifinalist in Roland Garros 2020 and finalist in the Masters 1000 of Rome That year, a tournament in which the pleasure of beating Rafael Nadal. And he won the respect and affection of the entire circuit for his quality as a player and as a person. And that when I was little and just began to hit the ball in the club Hacoajdoctors had predicted that it would not go very far due to their height: 1.70 meters, little for a professional tennis in which the best are increasingly high. Therefore, he said that, looking back and reviewing those 15 years of professionalism, sometimes I don’t understand how he achieved everything he achieved.
Diego Schwartzman, before his retirement. Photo Emmanuel Fernández“What I wonder many times is how with ‘Less shots’ And less skills, naturally speaking, I could have the career I had. Especially after the last year in which I competed, in which I had a lot of wins ATP games. I wonder how I did to win games and stay for so long, feeling well on the court. Because my career was going from A Poquito, taking steps forward, until I could sustain in the elite many years, ”said the little one.
And he continued: “I am surprised how I did it, because it is very difficult. It is not just effort, as many believe. You have to do well, you need a lot of level, and add other attitudes and many hours of work outside the court. And I think that over time, people also began to value all that much more. ”
Schwartzman said that something else that surprises him is the arrival he has with people. “It is still weird, however mathematics it has: you do it better in a sport that looks at everyone, you get more to people. Maybe now, I’m taking dimension of all that. ”
It is natural to think that one of the most beautiful memories of Schwartzman’s career is that huge triumph in two sets against Nadal in the rooms of Rome, in an atypical 2020 season for the pandemic. He Little He assured that this party will never forget it, but that there is another celebration that values more.
“Rafa He had won his first two games well and I hadn’t started well after the pandemic parate. And I said ‘The mother fucking, is going to shit me to sticks’. A thousand times I had played my hundred percent and did not reach. And there everything was given. Some mistakes of him and perfection on my side: the defenses, the attacks, where I was standing on the court, the decisions I made. It is the only way to beat players like him, ”he recalled.
He added: “But taking out that game, one of the most important things was to win this tournament. Many do not take dimension of what it is to win here. And it is very hard, because it is one of the tournaments in which you feel that you will not be able to perform or control your nerves. That is why I stay more with those other moments that I had in tournaments like this, than with that punctual match against Nadal.
-More beyond all that and sports achievements, what gave you tennis?
-The most representative thing is to have a lot of things, many more than I need. And in a country that the one that costs so much, to enjoy a lot of things in life and on a day -to -day basis is a spectacular privilege. And all that gave me tennis. Not only for me, for people around me. Being able to help people around, you know that you can be there for anyone, it’s something very nice. I never imagined that.