14th November, 1999
MY PRIZE CUP'S RUNNING ON EMPTY
THE Davis Cup final is officially off my agenda. After discussions this week with the physio and John Newcombe, I have reluctantly accepted that being in Nice next month to support the guys against France is out of the question.
I need to keep up the work rate with the rehab on the shoulder and there is a chance I could need another cortisone injection.
I do not want to be in a situation wehre I am over there and having to search for the right treatment - and I also do not want to find myself a week behind schedule with the rehab, as much as I want to be at the Davis Cup.
I have to carefully monitor what I do in terms of the shoulder.
I have been told by the physio that if I push too hard and try to return too quickly, I could stuff up the rest of the year and possibly the rest of my career.
The rehab is going well, but the type of injury I have is typical of those found in 50 year olds, not 26 year olds. But I have been playing tennis for 22 years.
Newk understands where I'm coming from and all the guys on the team know how much I want to be there, too. At this stage it seems likely that I'm going to miss out on all the hard work that we've done as a team over the past five or six years.
I would love to be there, but I've got to carefully monitor what I do in terms of the shoulder.
There has been a lot of wear and tear on the joint, so I have to be really careful.
There are a lot of athletes especially baseball pitchers and bowlers who have not been able to come back from injuring their rotator cuffs twice.
This is the first tear that I have had an hopefully it is the only one.
One of the things I have to change is my practice habits - I will not be able to hit as many serves and the work in that area is going to have to be reduced. How that will affect my game is something I will not know until I start playing again. But I do not have a choice.
I have only so many serves left in my body and it is up to me how and where I use them. The rehab is a long adn intensive process and I will not know for some time whether I can play the Australian Open in January.
THE Davis Cup squads named by Australia and France for the final were predictable, but I would have liked to have seen Andrew Ilie selected. Andrew would have been
the next player in the quarter final against the US if something had gone wrong with Lleyton or me.
Andrew loves clay and I think he would give Newk insurance against injuries to Lleyton or Mark Philippoussis.