John Millman accepts he may have played his last Australian Open singles match as he prepares for an early season rally to try to climb back inside the top 100 and extend his career.
The 33-year-old confirmed to The Age and Sydney Morning Herald he planned to keep playing once the tour leaves Australia, and has entered the Koblenz Open, an ATP Challenger 100 event in Germany, where he will try to make a dent in his ranking.
He will firstly play alongside countryman Aleks Vukic in the men’s doubles at what is his ninth home grand slam main draw appearance before making a definitive decision.
John Millman wants to try to regain a top-100 ranking in a bid to extend his career.Credit:AP
But Millman, who lost his second-round match at Melbourne Park on Wednesday night to Russia’s dual finalist Daniil Medvedev, has set an undisclosed time limit on rejoining the world’s elite if he does plough on.
What he does know is his battered body feels as good as it has for more than a year, even if he must deal with ongoing hip and back pain.
“To be completely honest, I spent a lot of years grinding; playing the lower-level tournaments, stop-and-start, with three surgeries every time,” he said. “I don’t have the interest to do that [again], so I’d have to get the results early because my ranking has dropped [to 140].
“It’s probably a bit fresh. I thought the level there [against Medvedev] was pretty good. It was a real test, right? That’s probably what you want right now – a test against one of the world’s best.”
Millman, who famously defeated Roger Federer to make the 2018 US Open quarter-finals in the same year he reached his best ranking of No.33, will rewatch the Medvedev match to get a deeper read on his form.
That result followed the Brisbane warrior’s typically gutsy five-set defeat of 51st-ranked Swiss Marc-Andrea Huesler on Monday, in front of a raucous show court three crowd that reminded him of the “addictive” nature of sport.
John Millman.Credit:Getty Images
The win over Huesler followed an encouraging series of results in Adelaide, where he beat three top-100 rivals, headlined by world No.38 Albert Ramos-Vinolas.
“I don’t normally watch my matches,” Millman said. “But I will go back and just see how far away I was from, not winning, not like that, but just to see if the level that I think I played at stacks up to what I’m watching.
“I left it all out there and, in the end, probably the last couple of days – and also in Adelaide – was probably the best I’ve hit for a little bit, I would say, so that’s nice.”
Millman’s career includes representing Australia in the Davis Cup and two Olympic Games, on top of winning an ATP Tour title at the Astana Open, in Kazakhstan, in 2020. He made at least the second round at the Australian Open in six of his past seven trips to Melbourne Park, including advancing to the last 32 in 2016 and 2020.
Millman will almost certainly receive offers to remain in tennis post-playing if he chooses to, but has more interest in administration than a coaching role that would mean still spending most of the year on the road.
“I’m unsure if my future is in coaching. I say that more so because I know the sacrifice the coaches make,” he said. “Mark Draper was doing 35 weeks a year, and I probably am a bit travelled out.
“I’d like to have a bit of family time [once I retire], to spend a bit of time with my immediate family and [girlfriend] Fee, and look after the people who sacrificed a lot for me.”
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