Wimbledon 2009: Marat Safin ready for smashing send off

By Mark Hodgkinson
Published: 9:36PM BST 09 Jun 2009

As any rock star throwing a television set out of a hotel window should be able to tell you, smashing things can become a cliché. And yet Marat Safin has always maintained a certain style and flair as he trashes, mangles and crumples tennis rackets.

No regrets: Marat Safin insists that he will not miss tennis once he retires from the ATP.

Practice makes perfect, and apart from "game, set and match, Federer", the most frequently spoken words by the world's tennis umpires must be "racket abuse, warning, Safin".

Safin's matches at Queen's Club and at Wimbledon could contain more gratuitous violence than a Quentin Tarantino box-set. How many rackets has he broken over the course of his career? Oh, only about 700.

When Safin, a former world No 1 and double grand slam champion, retires at the end of the season, the art of smashing rackets could go with him. The Russian is the 'Last of the Great Racket Trashers'. Still, Safin suggested that his racket suppliers, Head, would be relieved when he wrecks a frame for the last time. "I think Head will be happy that I'm leaving tennis now, as they won't have to produce as many rackets. Breaking all those rackets, it was worth it.

"I'd guess I've smashed 700 rackets in my career, maybe more. That's not so many. The rackets probably cost about $200 each, so 700 rackets at $200 each, that's not so much really. That's OK, I think," he said. So that is at least $140,000 in broken frames, so approaching £90,000, and if you add on all the fines he has received over the years for racket abuse, the total bill for his racket-trashing could be close to a quarter of a million pounds.

That is some habit. But, as Safin said, "it was worth it. Some people will remember me for breaking rackets, but that's OK, I don't mind". If Safin is probably going to miss the thrill of breaking rackets, he will not miss the life of a tennis player. "The routine kills me. It kills me. It's not interesting at all," said Safin, a Wimbledon semi-finalist last summer, and who will open his last grass-court season when, after a bye through the first round, he plays Belgium's Xavier Malisse in the second round of the Aegon Championships, this week's pre-Wimbledon tournament on the lawns of Queen's Club.

"It's beautiful what people see on TV, when you're on the court, and there are all those people in the stadium," the 29-year-old said. "But nobody sees the other side of it, when you have to do the massages, when you have to practise, when you have to do a lot of things. I haven't been able to do a lot of the things I want to do. "You can't have a late dinner before a match, you have to be careful about what you're eating, you can't go for a drink late at night with anyone. Everything has to be on schedule. Also, after a certain time, you live in a state of what feels almost like continuous stress. I want to get out of it, just so that I'm able to breathe."

The pressure to improve has worn down Safin. "Every week, you are thinking, 'I need to perform, I need to practise, I need to improve, I need to work out, I need to make sure I don't get injured, I need to go to the gym again, I need to practise for more hours'. The whole thing, it takes a lot of energy. It reaches a point where you just don't have the energy to do it anymore."

There is no sadness on Safin's part that he is leaving tennis. "I love tennis, but I can see there is plenty of life outside tennis. It's not like it's the centre of the world," he said. "I want to live my life fully and do different things."

Safin's first grand-slam title came when he hit Pete Sampras off the court at the 2000 US Open, and he won his second major by beating Lleyton Hewitt in the final of the 2005 Australian Open.

"I hate to talk about my achievements. I won those two grand slams. I won. That's it. That's what I did. I hate it when people ask me about winning those two tournaments," he said.

"They seem to think that I changed the world. No, I did my job, and I got a beautiful cup and a beautiful cheque. That's it. Of course, it's nice, and it's beautiful. But I didn't change the world. Why would I want to shout about it to people?"