The former striker for Atletico Madrid, Manchester United, and Uruguay, Diego Forlan, is recalling one of the most stressful moments of his career. It happened on the tennis court, not the football field, when he was still at United.
From an early age, Forlan showed great promise as a tennis player, and even considered becoming pro in his midteen years. Ultimately, he chose to play football, following in the footsteps of his father, brother, and grandfather (the first two of whom were future Uruguay internationals).
By 2003, having recently turned 24, he was playing for reigning Premier League champions United.
During their pre-season tour in the United States that summer, the team had access to some of the tennis courts located at Nike’s headquarters in Portland, Oregon, a major player in the sports industry.
As Forlan felt he could score, Ruud van Nistelrooy, a striker for the Netherlands, who plays for United, challenged him. The team, which included players like Rio Ferdinand, Gary Neville, and Paul Scholes, assembled to watch, accompanied by their boss Sir Alex Ferguson, who, rumor has it, wagered on Forlan’s victory because of his history in tennis.
“Everyone just expected me to win, but the pressure was on and nobody knew that inside I was thinking, ‘I have to win!’,” Forlan says now, laughing at the memory. “I was better than Ruud, but you could see that he used to play when he was a kid.
“Sir Alex said, ‘I go for Diego’. He was cheering for me.
“We just played a tiebreak, and I won. It was a relief, because a tiebreak is like a penalty shootout. You can lose sometimes when you don’t really deserve to because it can be one point only that decides it.”
Probably a little less happy with the result than his manager was the very competitive Van Nistelrooy, who was rumored to pout even if United won a game but he had not scored.
Forlan and Van Nistelrooy celebrate beating Blackburn in the Worthington Cup semifinal (John Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)
In order to explain how and why he ended up playing on the International Tennis Federation (ITF) Masters Tour, the 45-year-old Uruguayan told the tale from his home in Montevideo, the nation’s capital.
Before entering the 40+ age group, Forlan made his debut in the 35+ age group. He is now competing against people who are 45 years of age and older, having turned 45 in May.
Two months ago, in Lima, Peru, he had his most recent tournament at the 1000 level. Forlan will face former coaches, former college players, and others who earned a few ATP points by winning professional matches in the past in this, the highest ranking match on the regular tour. Forlan participated in his first three events at the lower-level 400 competitions, where the players are more akin to elite club players or past state or provincial champions.
Despite not being a professional circuit, the ITF Masters Tour does occasionally give out cash prizes at its discretion. This money, which is usually in the hundreds of dollars rather than thousands, will usually go to the winner and occasionally the runner-up, mostly merely to pay their expenses.
The World Championships, the Grand Slam equivalent, are a step up from the events Forlan is participating in. Arnaud Clement, a former world No. 10 from France and a finalist at the Australian Open, has competed in the same age group as the Uruguayan in the last two years.
“He’s playing at a very high level of tennis for his age category,” Matt Byford, head of Juniors and Masters tennis at the ITF, says of the Uruguayan.
Forlan, still in excellent shape and with his familiar long hair intact, has played four Masters tournaments (two in Montevideo, one in Punta del Este — another city in Uruguay — and most recently the one in Lima). He reached the quarter-finals in the Lima singles (hammering his opponents in his first three matches) while he and his partner won the doubles title without dropping a set.
He asked his good friend and former Uruguayan Davis Cup captain, Enrique “Bebe” Perez, to start working with him to improve his game, and now he plays four times a week at the tennis club where he grew up, the Carrasco Lawn Tennis Club in Montevideo, which hosts Uruguay’s home Davis Cup ties and the Uruguay Open Challenger, an ATP Tour-level tournament.
He acknowledges that he can not help but be extremely competitive on the court and plans to participate in four or five more events this year. Even if he is not playing for 50,000+ football supporters anymore, but rather a small audience of a few hundred tennis enthusiasts.
The football player Forlan was two-footed, incredibly athletic, and technically proficient. He finally became a cult icon among Manchester United’s supporters during his two and a half years there, from January 2002 to the summer of 2004, after overcoming a terrible start in which he did not score until eight months (and 27 games) after joining from Argentina’s Independiente.
He went on to defeat bitter rivals Liverpool at Anfield in December 2001 by scoring a historic double, and his unwavering dedication won him over many hearts and minds.
Following United, he had successful stints in Spain with Villarreal, helping them go to the Champions League semifinals in 2005–06, and Atletico Madrid.
At both clubs, he was the recipient of the Pichichi Trophy, which goes to the top goalscorer in a La Liga season. Having scored in both legs of the semifinal against longtime rivals Liverpool, he helped Atletico Madrid defeat Fulham 2-1 in the 2009–10 Europa League final. Liverpool was defeated 2-2 due to the now-repeated away-goals rule. With five goals that summer, Forlan advanced Uruguay to the World Cup semifinals.
Over the course of his career, Forlan scored over 300 goals and traveled to Italy, Brazil, Japan, India, and Hong Kong. He also received the Golden Ball, which goes to the greatest player, after finishing joint top in goals scored at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
After 20 years of playing professional football, he finally retired in August 2019 at the age of 40. Despite managing teams and taking on different ambassadorial roles, he managed to find time to rewire his brain to understand a new yet old sport. In addition to becoming the owner of a third-division football team in Uruguay, he represents La Liga, Atletico, and United abroad and maintains relationships with some of his former teammates.
He plays padel, another racquet sport he practiced as a child, and tennis these days. He is a regular goal scorer for a local amateur team. Forlan’s four children, three boys and a girl between the ages of eight and three, also keep him busy outside of his sporting career. It is not surprising if, in a few years, there is a fourth generation of Forlan sporting greatness, as the youngsters also play regular tennis and football.
Forlan had intended to devote much of his retirement to improving his golf skills, but he has discovered that tennis has pulled him back in. The sport he excelled at in his youth, together with football, is the only thing that brings him the same sense of fulfillment.
Forlan scoring against the Netherlands at the 2010 World Cup (Lars Baron/Getty Images)
“I need something where I can run,” he says. “Golf, you play in beautiful places — I like it and I still do it, but I need something different, something more similar to football. I started training and playing tennis and I was getting better and better.
“At first, I would play the top players at the club and players from around Uruguay and it was easy for them to beat me. Then it became more difficult. Now I can win. At the club tournaments, I was losing in the first round, now I’m winning a lot of them.”
Forlan is left-handed in tennis but right-handed in everything else, much like one of his tennis idols, Rafael Nadal of Spain. Though he is right-footed, he feels most at ease using his left boot. His brother first suggested that he hold the racket in his left hand when he was around three years old, and that suggestion stuck.
“If you see me play, you will assume, ‘This man has played since he was a kid because the technique is more of a tennis player,” says Forlan, who was an avid tennis player growing up. Not a professional tennis player, of course. However, it appears that he has played tennis all of his life.
“I’m not saying a good player, but if you see me play nowadays you will see a tennis player, not an ex-football player.”
Byford agrees — “You can tell he played a large amount of tennis in his formative years. He put in those hours on the tennis court as a junior, so the technical skills are there” — and also points to the crossover between the two sports.
While Andy Murray, then 14 years old, was given a chance to try out for Scottish club Rangers, Roger Federer excelled in his home country of Switzerland before turning to tennis at the age of 12. Rafael Nadal also comes from a football family; his uncle, Miguel Angel Nadal, is a legendary former Barcelona and Spain defender. In a charity match in 2008, Nadal scored a double hat-trick past Spain’s goalkeeper, Iker Casillas. Seven years ago, Paolo Maldini, one of the best defenders in football history, qualified for the Milan Challenger event in doubles but lost in the opening round.
“A lot of tennis players are very good footballers because the skills are very transferable,” says Byford. “Athletically, the movement is pretty similar — forwards and backwards, left and right. You need to have a very good balance between speed and endurance, and be well distributed between their lower and upper body.”
Forlan is a good fit for this. At 5 feet 11 inches (180 cm), he is on the shorter side for a tennis player, but his balanced build is exactly what Byford says, and as a football player, he possessed a great combination of speed and endurance.
Forlan playing in the Champions League for Atletico in 2009 (Jasper Juinen/Getty Images)
Having spent much of his tennis career on clay courts, he is an aggressive baseliner who has put a lot of effort into improving the consistency of his serve and eliminating the double faults from his younger career. Although Pablo Cuevas, a tennis player, made the world’s top 20 nine years ago, football is undoubtedly the most popular sport in Uruguay, a small South American nation of about 3.4 million people.
Forlan had to deal with watching tennis from a distance while playing football. While on a pre-season tour with Independiente, he recollects watching the exhilarating 2001 Wimbledon final, in which another lefty, Goran Ivanisevic, defeated Pat Rafter in five sets. Forlan grew up watching Uruguay’s Davis Cup matches, and as his professional career took off, he developed an intense rivalry with Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Murray.
Once he moved to Spain, Forlan was lucky enough to get to hit with a couple of former world No 1s — Russian Marat Safin and Carlos Alcaraz’s fellow Spaniard and current coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero. He met them through Perez, who worked with players including Ecuador’s Nicolas Lapentti, a one-time world No 6, and Spain’s two-time French Open finalist Alex Corretja.
When Forlan hits with Safin and Ferrero, “I could keep up with the pace of their shots because they were not hitting their hardest.” “With them, I could have enjoyable rallies. Furthermore, the tennis I was playing fifteen years ago was nothing like the tennis I play now.
When Forlan had the opportunity, he attended the French Open in Paris as well as the Madrid Open. During his time in Villarreal, he also became friends with Sergio Garcia, a Spanish golfer who went on to win the Augusta Masters and had dated former world number one Martina Hingis.
Forlan at the 2011 Madrid Masters, won by Djokovic against Nadal (Europa Press/Europa Press via Getty Images)
“We are very close friends,” Forlan says of Garcia. “We played a very tight game in Spain. I beat him and he said, ‘Now, we have to play another game’. When I played my retirement game in Uruguay in 2019, he came out and we played again.”
Forlan adds with a smile: “I beat him again.”
Forlan’s friend Carlos Obregon, a fellow Uruguayan who competes in the 65+ division, persuaded him to give the ITF Masters a shot after he had been retired from football for a few years, but cautioned that he would need to practice properly.
Forlan did not require a further invitation. He intensified his preparation, and in July of last year, he made his over-35 debut in Montevideo, making it to the second round. He raised the ante at the beginning of this year by enlisting the aid of his pal Perez, the Davis Cup captain of Uruguay for nearly 20 years and a youth coach at Forlan’s club.
“I said to him, ‘I’m stuck with my tennis. I need to improve. I want to improve and do more’,” Forlan says. “So we started between two and three days a week, one hour and a half. Then we bring some players at Challenger level, some in the U.S. at a university. Then I sometimes train with the 15, 16, 17-year-olds at our club, like I used to do when I was a kid.
“Now it’s four days a week, because it’s the only way to improve. The other players that I play against, they’ve been playing all their whole life. So I need to catch up.”
On the day he spoke to The Athletic, Forlan had a two-hour afternoon hitting session with Perez and some of the youngsters he coaches.
Even though there are just a few hundred spectators, Forlan enjoys the energy of the competitions and the rush of competing once more. While most of his opponents have relished the increased attention his profile has garnered, he claims that some have found it a little unsettling. Supporters, however, have been pleasantly pleased by his caliber of play.
Does Forlan get excited about these games in front of a few hundred supporters, given that he spent his entire career scoring goals in large stadiums in front of tens of thousands of fans?
“Yeah, yeah,” he says instantly. “I like competition. I like a challenge. The adrenaline and everything is like when I was playing football. Everyone says that when you retire from football, you are not going to have anything compared to it. I’m doing it because I like tennis. I would do it just playing socially, but it has taken me to a place that I get that adrenaline.”
Forlan is also enjoying the advancements he is making in his game from frequent practice and study sessions.
He mentions Denis Shapovalov, a former world No. 10 from Canada, who he claims used to play with a single-handed backhand while watching Rafael Nadal. Due to a weakened left shoulder from an injury sustained a few years ago, Forlan had to adjust to playing with two hands. He is now finishing points at the net by getting to the net and utilizing the left-handed slicing serve out wide onto the so-called ad side, which is the backhand of a right-hander. He claims he is “beginning to comprehend and understand the game,” and despite having a superior forehand, his prolonged use of a one-handed backhand has given him a decent slice.
Forlan frequently has a significant physical edge over his opponents, but his opponents have far more tennis experience, and he has found it extremely difficult to adjust mentally. He had to rewire his sporting brain for the patience tennis needs, having spent his entire football career attempting to get shots off as soon as there was a chance.
“I said to my coach, ‘You need to understand that my whole life, if I get any small gap to shoot, I would do it quickly’,” he says. “In tennis, it’s about waiting for the right ball. When I started, I was hitting every ball. I was losing many matches — it didn’t matter if I was in the right position, I was just looking for the gap on the other side. My opponents would hit balls really hard near the baseline, and I would have about a five per cent chance of hitting a winner, but it didn’t matter, I would still go for it.”
He says he has now changed how he thinks, learning to pick the best chance to strike, rather than focusing on volume. “I’m hitting a rally, and sometimes I go for it and I think, ‘Come on, you know that you have to wait one more’.”Changing sports has also required learning to strike a new balance between one’s own performance and the final product.. “In football, there were so many games that I didn’t play well, but I scored,” Forlan says. “A goal was worth much more than a point. In tennis, it’s not like you lose a point and then say, ‘OK, the match is over’. There’s always time.
“It’s like Carlos Alcaraz when he won Roland Garros (the French Open in June) — he didn’t always play the tennis that he wanted to play, but he won. And that’s something you have to understand.”
Alcaraz won the 2024 French Open without being at his top level for much of the tournament (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
Forlan has spoken to several tennis players about these mental challenges. “That’s why now I’m getting better. When I got onto the football pitch, I knew how to deal with frustration. Now I’m trying to deal with that in tennis. I feel like now, I can win or lose but I’m not going to be ashamed,” he says.
His ITF ranking for the 45+ category, out of around 2,000 players competing in multiple tournaments, is No 191 for singles and 97 for doubles, which should go up as he plays in more tournaments. “I want to play among the good ones, and be competitive,” Forlan says, “knowing that if they are going to beat me, they will have to work it out.”
Although Antonio Amaro da Silva Filho, ranked No. 28 and as high as No. 2 in a different age group, defeated him in straight sets in his most recent tournament, he believes he learned a lot from facing a player who participated in a professional Futures event in Brazil six years prior.
Forlan wants to just keep working hard and getting better at what he does now that he has improved so quickly.
He has never attended the Grand Slam held in London, but his aim is to attend Wimbledon the next season.
Naturally, that would be as a spectator rather than a participant. Even for this athletic polymath, that might be going too far.
(Top photo: Europa Press/Getty Images)
