He crashed on the highway, and the covid took his breath away. Cheerful turned a crisis year into a success in life

It has been seven years since he climbed to his current maximum, 35th place in the rankings. It gave hope that in the future it would confirm the ambitions of the former junior world number one. But from here the Příbram tennis player retreated and after last year’s suffering he completely dropped out of the top 100.

“I was even the youngest player in the elite 100 at the age of 19. Everyone expects you to be in the top ten, or at least twenty, but that’s not the case. Veselý let himself be heard.

But that does not mean that he does not know how to play tennis at such a level that he would be hampered by the art of playing. It was more of a psyche.

“Suddenly you are being chased by sponsors, managers, they are all watching you and wondering how you will be. Somehow it broke me, I was not able to move on to the top thirty. At the age of twenty-one, I felt like thirty-five,” he admitted.

Although he fell through the standings, he was sometimes able to pull off unprecedented success, whether it was the Wimbledon round of 16 or Novak Djokovic’s scalp. In the spring of 2016, the Serb acted as an invincible machine, until in the second round of the event in Monte Carlo he met an almost two-meter Czech giant and fell in three sets.

“It’s my handwriting, I’m able to beat the best players in the world, but then I lose to the boys in the second or third hundred. I guess it suits me to be the one who surprises the favorites,” he explained.

After six seasons, history was repeated last week in Dubai, in the quarterfinals he again climbed to world number one Djokovic. He started with a crushing service, a brave fast game on the court, did not give the Serb even a set and kept a positive balance of mutual battles with him.

“It was a dream trip through the tournament, I’m very happy, especially after what happened in the last twelve months,” Veselý suggested for him a really dramatic year 2021.

Just before the tournament in Dubai last February, he contracted coronavirus. The illness seemed harmless to him, he experienced a mild course.

“But then I jumped into training and I couldn’t breathe. I had trouble enduring an hour or two of training. It lasted for maybe three months.”

At that time, the then Czech number one lost in the first rounds and fell to the ever lower levels of the rankings. Another blow came in the summer, Veselý had a car accident with his whole family on the D4 motorway. The tennis player failed to drive in rainy weather and crashed into a tree.

“Fortunately, I wasn’t seriously injured, I only had a bit of a crippled neck from the crash. We were all very lucky and got along relatively well. But it was just before the US Open, it wasn’t the perfect time,” he said.

At the turn of the year, he began to feel better tennis. It hasn’t worked out in Australia yet, but in Dubai his form has worked unbelievably. After a successful qualification, he lost to Marina Čilič, Robert Bautista-Agut or Denise Shapovalov, in addition to Djokovic. Then, due to exhaustion from the seven-match line, he was no longer enough for Andrei Rublyov.

“I don’t know what it is. Probably since I’m older, I’m more experienced. I’ve had eight years of playing against these guys, so I probably already know how to play to beat them. I really don’t know, but I’m enjoying it,” he said. Veselý, who thus returned to the position of the Czech number one.

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