{"id":369649,"date":"2024-02-21T19:04:10","date_gmt":"2024-02-21T20:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=369649"},"modified":"2024-02-21T21:02:37","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T21:02:37","slug":"giant-who-stunned-hewitt-retires-21-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=369649","title":{"rendered":"Giant who stunned Hewitt retires 21 years later"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ivo Karlovic, the towering Croatian known for his booming serve, has announced his retirement from tennis<\/a> more than two years after playing his last tournament match.<\/p>\n

The 211cm Karlovic said in a post on X that \u201cI\u2019ve had a very gratifying, unorthodox and long career coming from extremely humble beginnings, especially for a tennis player".<\/p>\n

The 44-year-old Karlovic \u2014 he will turn 45 next week \u2014 played his last ATP match in a second-round qualifying loss at Indian Wells, California in October 2021. His last grand slam tournament match was a first-round singles loss at the US Open about six weeks earlier.<\/p>\n

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Karlovic first made a name for himself in 2003 after coming through qualifying at Wimbledon and defeating defending champion Lleyton Hewitt<\/a> in the first round at the All England Club.<\/p>\n

\"Ivo<\/p>\n

It was Karlovic\u2019s first match at a grand slam tournament and the result made Hewitt the first defending Wimbledon champion to lose in the first round since the start of the Open era in 1968.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of you have noticed that it\u2019s been a while since I played a tournament and still ask me on a daily basis if and when I\u2019ll be returning to the tour,\u201d Karlovic wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry to disappoint, but with this letter, I want to make it official and finally announce my retirement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karlovic finished his 25-year career with eight singles titles and a record of 371 wins, 346 losses and $15.4 million in prize money. His highest singles ranking was at No.14 in August 2008.<\/p>\n

Six-time grand slam singles champion Boris Becker was among those to congratulate Karlovic on X, calling his serve \u201cthe best in tennis".<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ivo Karlovic, the towering Croatian known for his booming serve, has announced his retirement from tennis more than two years after playing his last tournament […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":369651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369649"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=369649"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":369652,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369649\/revisions\/369652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/369651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=369649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=369649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=369649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}