He came. He saw. He hit some tennis balls. He lost. And his wrist didn’t explode. In fact, it feels “perfect”. We’re all winners.

The first set was all you could ask from the big guy. He pounded out serves when he needed for them, went for shots when he had the chance, and ripped some forehands. Were there errors? Oh hell yes. Were there epic shots? OH HELL YES.

In particular, the forehand cross court was looking dangerous, and he hit one as a return winner that was particularly lazerbeam-ish. While the errors came due to the lack of timing, it ended up hurting his confidence level unfortunately. In cross court rallies, he wasn’t particularly interested in turning balls around going for bombs down the line. When he did, they typically worked out alright, but it was pretty obvious that he preferred to try and hit through Rochus with the cross court shot.

The second set wasn’t a whole lot different save for more Delpo errors. These were more of the silly ones; easy forehands into the net, goofy looking backhands wide. He kept fighting though, and showed shades of his normal, freewheeling-forehand self, and a bit of that great, underrated defense.

A 7-6, 6-4 loss in your first match back doesn’t look bad on paper, and rightfully so. 16 aces, 1 double fault, 65% on the first serve and 75% of first serve points won. I’m sure the error count is wicked high, but that’s beside the point. Delpo said his wrist feels “perfect”, and he looked surprisingly strong and agile out there. I’d go as far to say that physically, he’s probably around 90-95%. It’s going to be a process of getting the timing and the feel for the ball back, but hell, is there any better time to work on that than during an indoor swing where you don’t have to worry about wind and other factors?

Welcome back big guy. We’ve all missed you.