"It's not easy to just stop" says Stefanos Tsitsipas after Paris retirement

Stefanos Tsitsipas retired from a match for the first time in his career against Popyrin at the Paris Masters and the Greek admitted it was very hard for him.

Stefanos Tsitsipas has been blessed with very good health. The Greek player plays a rather taxing style of tennis but so far in his career he was able to avoid any significant injuries and the retirement against Popyrin was the first time he retired from a match. The reason was a rather simple one, an injury, that he wants to manage with the ATP Finals very close.

After retiring he spoke with the media saying:

“I haven't retired once in my life, and it was something that I had to do today… I'm trying to be cautious for the next tournament, which is the most important one for me. I have had an issue there for quite a while now. It has gotten bigger in the past couple of weeks, so I'm just trying to protect it. I felt the pain playing in the match, and I just don't want for it to get worse than it is now.”

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Tsitsipas did not disclose what type of injury it was but it perhaps has to do something with his foot that bothered him at the US Open as well. Back then Tsitsipas admitted it was something recurring for a while but continued to play through it. He further admitted it was very hard for him to just stop:

“It's not easy to just stop, especially when you have important tournaments like this one here that I really wanted to do well [in]. It hurts a lot not to be able to play at the level that I'm expected to play, and I'm expecting myself to play. I'm going to have treatment. I'm going to try and have the best people treat me and give me the best advice – anything possible to recover and be 100 per cent again.”