Pablo Andújar announced on Wednesday that he will play his last tournament as a professional tennis player in the Faulcombridge Cup, a Challenger to be held from November 19th to 26th at the Valencia Tennis Club, thus ending a 20-year professional career.
Throughout his career, he won four ATP titles, was a member of the Spanish Davis Cup team, and reached the World No. 32 ranking.
The 37-year-old tennis player, born in Cuenca but moved to Valencia at the age of 3, started playing tennis at the age of 6 at the El Collao Tennis Club in Manises (Valencia) and turned professional in 2003, excelling as a clay court specialist, reaching nine ATP finals on this surface and winning four of them.
He won his first ATP tournament in Casablanca in 2012 and repeated the following year, showing his connection with Morocco, a country where he also triumphed in Marrakech in 2018, his last ATP 250 tournament. He completed the poker by winning the title in Gstaad in 2014.
Andújar had his peak year in 2015, when he achieved his best ATP ranking as World No. 32 and reached the final of the Barcelona Open, after eliminating David Ferrer in the semifinals, although he was defeated by Japanese player Kei Nishikori in the final. He also played two Davis Cup ties with the Spanish team.
However, injuries in his elbow and the inactivity due to the operations he had to undergo in the following two seasons almost put an end to his career, as he fell to the lowest region of the ATP ranking, where, as he recalled, he reached zero points.
In 2018, he considered it his last year as a professional. The player recalled in an interview with the EFE Agency how, in the worst moments, he found the strength to not retire and how his fatherhood and marriage were a catalyst to reverse that situation. He even asked his wife to accompany him to Australia to play the qualifying rounds of the first Grand Slam of the season, as he was convinced it would be his last one.
However, Andújar had a great year, especially in the second half of the season, when he won in Marrakech as the World No. 355, becoming the second lowest-ranked champion since the establishment of the ATP Tour in 1990, only surpassed by Lleyton Hewitt, who won in Adelaide in 1998 as the World No. 550.
In just 9 months, he went from being World No. 1,472 to reaching the 98th position in the ATP rankings, one of the most meteoric rises in the history of the ATP classification, which gave him a second chance in tennis.
In 2021, he defeated Roger Federer in the second round of the Geneva Open and came back from two sets down to achieve the biggest victory of his career against the then World No. 4 Dominic Thiem in the first round of Roland Garros. He also reached his first Grand Slam semifinals in doubles at Roland Garros with Pedro Martínez.
In 2022, he played a total of 22 matches, winning nine, and played his last Grand Slam match at Wimbledon, where he was defeated in the first round by the local and Top 10 player Cameron Norrie. In this upcoming season that is about to end, he has only played ten matches with a single victory in the qualifying rounds of Indian Wells against Portuguese player Nuno Borges.
Next month, Andújar will play his last match as a professional in the Faulcombridge Cup, a Challenger tournament of which he has been the director since last year. He will be accompanied by other illustrious Spanish tennis players such as Roberto Bautista, Marcel Granollers, and Albert Ramos, and the tournament will take place at the Valencia Tennis Club, his lifelong club.