Veteran South African tennis player Kevin Anderson has played his final shot as a professional and can look back with satisfaction at an impressive career.
There is no telling how good Kevin Anderson’s record could have been had his career not been regularly interrupted by injury, or more crucially, had it not overlapped with the three greatest men’s players of all time.
Seven career titles, two Grand Slam singles final appearances, $17.73-million in prize money and a career-high world ranking of No 5 are impressive numbers by any measurement. In all, he played 606 professional matches winning 354 for a 58% winning ratio. Anderson’s 2.03-metre frame made him one of the biggest servers on tour, but he wasn’t as mobile as some slightly smaller players. Perhaps he was the right man at the wrong time in some ways. In the 1990s and into the early 2000s, men’s tennis was power based with servers such as Pete Sampras reigning supreme.
Anderson’s rise up the rankings was steady, not spectacular. He ended 2007 at 221 in the world. By 2008 year-end it was 104, but injuries set him back the following year as he dropped to 161. But 2010 saw a rise of exactly 100 places as he finished the year at 61 and it wasn’t until 2011 that Anderson won his first pro title at the Johannesburg Open.
In 2018 Anderson famously reached the tournament final after a six-hour, 36-minute semifinal win over John Isner, following a superb victory over Federer in the quarterfinals. “I’ve always enjoyed the theory that the harder you work and the more you put into it, the better you can become. The sacrifice versus reward play-off is always something that motivated me.
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