Australian tennis battler Thanasi Kokkinakis is recovering from an operation he hopes will put an end to the "mental and physical torture" he's been suffering with a long-standing pectoral injury.
The 28-year-old Davis Cup player posted a photograph on social media on Thursday, showing him in hospital after the procedure while he also admitted that he was facing his "toughest challenge".
After Kokkinakis had suffered a tough defeat to Jack Draper at the Australian Open in January and was then forced to pull out of a doubles match with his pal Nick Kyrgios the next day, he revealed how the injury had been making his life a misery and would need surgery.
"There's no guarantees with surgery. One thing is for sure: I can't keep doing what I'm doing. It's mental torture and physical torture," he said at the time.
After the operation, the world No.84 reported on Instagram on Thursday: "Been struggling for a little while with this…
"Probably my toughest challenge to date. I've been trying to find the answers to an ongoing Pec injury that I haven't been able to fix. Let's see how this goes. Thank you for all your ongoing support."
It's another battle for the talented one-time teenage prodigy from Adelaide, a man good enough to have beaten Roger Federer in his pomp, whose progress has been stalled by so many injury setbacks.
He hasn't played since the Australian Open, where he explained in a gloomy press conference about a previous operation: "I got told my shoulder surgery was going to be ready, I'd be healed up in three months. Ended up taking me a year and a half to get back."
There's no timescale about when he might be back in action this time, but among the flood of messages of support for Kokkinakis from fellow pros like Borna Coric and Lucas Pouille was one from Davis Cup teammate, Matt Ebden, hoping he'd be back for Davis Cup action later in the year.
"There's a tear, for sure. I'm playing with a crazy amount of scar tissue in there. It's something that every time I show a physio or a doctor or something, they're taken back by it," Kokkinakis had explained in Melbourne.
"I've tried to sort it out for years manually, without surgery, just trying to do what I can. It's the reason why I can't back up big matches.
"My whole body is fine. It's just the same injury that I worked so hard on to try to get right. I still can't do it. That's the thing holding me back."
