World No.13
Taylor Fritz gave his assessment of the quick turnaround time for
Novak Djokovic, who appears ready to compete at the upcoming
Wimbledon Championships only a few weeks after having meniscus surgery.
The Serbian tore his meniscus earlier this month at the French Open, forcing him to withdraw from the event. Djokovic underwent surgery almost immediately after the incident, and is set to compete at Wimbledon, which begins on Monday.
Fritz recalls similar experience, compares it to Djokovic
The American suffered a similar meniscus tear at the 2021 French Open, undergoing surgery and was able to compete at that year's Wimbledon. The 2022 Indian Wells champion made it to the third round of that year's grass court Grand Slam, and recently assessed Djokovic's condition in an appearance on the Tennis Weekly podcast.
"You have full strength immediately," revealed Fritz. "You never lost full strength. It’s just about recovering from the actual surgery itself, not any muscular thing. So I’m not surprised. I believe he got in to do surgery before.
"I think his recovery time, I think he has more time than I had, actually. I know for a fact my first match at Wimbledon was exactly 20 days after my surgery. So I played a little less than three weeks after my surgery. Basically three weeks. I think I saw something saying, he’s on, like, I think like 19 or 18 or 20 [days] right about now, so he’s gonna have a whole extra week than I did."