When Marcos Baghdatis received the main draw wild card for the third Grand Slam of the season at Wimbledon, it could have only meant one thing! A few days later, the Cypriot who had just turned 34 announced the retirement from tennis at the All England Club, getting an opportunity to say farewell on the biggest tennis stage.

Ranked outside the top-50 since April 2017, the charismatic player decided to call it a career, unable to compete on the highest level anymore and eager to spend more time with his family. The winner of four ATP titles from 14 finals (the last one coming in Sydney 2010), Marcos made a professional debut at home in Cyprus back in 1999 at the age of 14, battling for his place under the tennis sun and cracking the top-200 in 2003.

In 2005, Baghdatis lost to Federer in the fourth round of the Australian Open after receiving massive support from the partisan crowd that cheered for him like he was playing in Cyprus or Greece, establishing himself as a regular top-100 player, with much more to come in Melbourne 12 months later.

At the age of 20, Marcos Baghdatis reached a Grand Slam final in Melbourne 2006, scoring incredible wins over Andy Roddick, Ivan Ljubicic and David Nalbandian before losing to Roger Federer in four sets. A few months later, Marcos was the semi-finalist at Wimbledon and had become world no.

8 just ahead of the US Open. Plagued with injuries, Baghdatis never played on that level again, with his results going up and down in the next ten years and competing in only three ATP finals in the last eight years. Marcos claimed respectable 348 victories on the ATP Tour, 66 of those at Grand Slams and 45 at Masters 1000 events.

Also, he added 22 top-10 wins to his tally, battling against the rivals like Roger Federer, David Nalbandian, Andy Roddick, Rafael Nadal, Nikolay Davydenko, Lleyton Hewitt, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, Marin Cilic, Juan Martin del Potro and Stan Wawrinka.

The Cypriot has two daughters with a former Croatian player Karolina Sprem and he is ready to stay involved in tennis as a coach or maybe in his country’s Davis Cup squad, defending the colors of Cyprus in 44 ties and winning almost 70 matches since 2000!

Before that, we will see him on the court again on the ATP Champions Tour in November at the Royal Albert Hall, making a debut at this level of competition against Juan Carlos Ferrero, Greg Rusedski, Mark Philippoussis, Thomas Enqvist and Xavier Malisse.

Besides them, David Ferrer, Goran Ivanisevic, Martina Hingis, Tim Henman, Tommy Haas and Mansour Bahrami will also headline the action at the Royal Albert Hall in the last days of November, with three teams battling for the Champions Tennis trophy.

Tennis World USA