«The message is clear and it will be brief. I simply want to announce that 2020 is going to be my last year as a professional tennis player, “he declared at a press conference.
Suárez assured that, at the age of 31, he has begun to have “other priorities”, that tennis is “a very demanding sport that requires a lot of sacrifice” and that he also wants to dedicate more time to his family.
«As you know, I am from the Canary Islands and, although at 18 I moved to Barcelona, at 14 or 15 I was already traveling the world, and I have been away from my family for a long time. Time passes, we cannot get it back and I really want to be with them. I feel that it is the right thing, and it is what the heart asked me, “he confessed.
In any case, Carla Suárez warned that no one expects her to relax in the year of her farewell. «I am still in a position to play one more year aspiring to everything. Both my team and I are fully committed and we want to finish in the most professional way possible. Do not take it as a goodbye. I hope that this last year we can all enjoy together, “he told the journalists summoned at CT Barcino.
And is that the Canary Islands has set very ambitious goals for 2020: «I would like to end the year ‘top-ten’, because I have always thought I had the level to be (it became sixth in the world for a few weeks in February 2016). And, in this sense, it will be very important to prepare well for the Grand Slams. And the other objective is to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics.
Among the unfulfilled dreams, “knowing what it feels like to win a Grand Slam” -the maximum that has come has been the quarterfinals-, although he stresses that tennis has given him “much more” than he could expect when he started to play “with eleven or twelve years.”
“That girl could not imagine getting where she has come,” said Carla Suárez, winner of two ATP titles (Oeiras 2014 and Doha 2016) and a finalist on 9 other occasions.
In any case, Suárez insisted that the decision to retire at a relatively early age “has not been taken lightly but is very thoughtful” and that it has nothing to do with the physical problems he has had in recent years and that “are part of the career of any tennis player.”
«If withdrawal makes me dizzy? It’s been a year and a half that I’ve been thinking about things and talking to my team about them. At the moment I do not have vertigo, but many ideas in mind and some projects that are already active, “he concluded. EFE