Knee Injury to Baker Down Under Narrows Men’s American Field of Hopefuls to One
American Brian Baker’s hopes of a run at the 2013 Australian Open were ended on Wednesday when he was forced to retire from his second round match with Sam Querrey with a knee injury. Baker, who returned last year after seven years off the professional circuit, had won the first set against Querrey in a tie-break and was even at 1-1 in the second when he suffered the injury.
"I didn’t see what happened," said Querrey. "I hit a ball, and then he hit a ball long. I was looking at the ballkids to grab balls for my serve, and then I looked back and he was on the ground. And then just asking him, he said he kind of just felt his knee almost buckle and kind of heard like a pop or a snap. He didn’t know if it was bones or a tear, but he couldn’t straighten it, couldn’t walk. I feel awful for him."
A finalist at the French Open Juniors in 2003, Baker was working his way up the senior rankings in 2005 when he first felt an injury in his left hip, which required surgery. That began a run of two left hip surgeries, a right hip operation, hernia surgery and right elbow surgery which, with the exception of a couple of matches in 2007, kept him off the tour until 2011.
"He’s the last person that deserves anything like that with his five or six surgeries already," added Querrey.
"He does everything right, treats his body great, just trying to come back, and then something like that happens, it’s just so unlucky."
Baker gave it one final go last year and went from world number 456 to 57 at the start of this year’s first Grand Slam, taking in a run to the last 16 as a qualifier at Wimbledon on the way. His upset victory in the first round at Melbourne Park against Alex Bogomolov Jr. of Russia on Monday was his first at the Australian Open and he had hoped to get back into the top 50 in the world by May.
