that french open final in 2004 was surreal, watching it at the time or a couple of months back on youtube,
long rallies on coria's championship points...coria at least lost the match points going for clear winners that just missed but really
...OH NOO.000OOOOoooooooooooo00ooo..:shock:
Yeah, absolutely gutting.
Coria has to be amongst the most unluckiest players of all time, really:
1999: Wins the French Open junior singles title, and Wimbledon junior doubles title.
2000: Coria's start on the main tour. He plays 4 main tour events, including the French Open.
2001: Tested positive for nandrolone in April and banned for 2 years as of August. Coria's ranking was around the 30 mark in this period. In December, a private lab shows the supplement he was taking was contaminated with nandrolone without listing it on the label. Coria sues the company, and years later, gets compensation.
2002: Is still banned for the first 3 months of the year, as the ATP reduced his ban from 2 years to 7 months rather than acquit him. He has to rebuild his ranking after missing out on 7 months.
2003: The only year of his career where he was playing excellent on the court and didn't have negative distractions off the court. He was in the ascendency as a player, particularly on clay. He won 5 tournaments in the year, including a Masters Series event in Hamburg, and winning 3 tournaments in 3 weeks without dropping a set from mid July to early August. He also got married in December 2003. The only real negative of the year was losing to Verkerk in the French Open semi finals.
2004: A mixed year. The high points included reaching the 2004 Miami final after twice coming back from the dead against Benneteau and Gonzalez, as well as increasing his clay-court reputation all the more by comfortably winning Buenos Aires and Monte Carlo, and fighting hard to win very tight matches in Hamburg against Almagro, Horna and Ljubicic, until Federer beat him to end the 31-match clay-court win streak. The lows included the crushing French Open final loss to Gaudio, and getting a shoulder injury at Wimbledon and needing surgery in August, forcing him to miss 3 months.
2005: Another mixed year. A very consistent year across all surfaces, one of only three players to reach at least the R16 at all 4 majors, great finals against a rising Nadal, particularly in Rome, but Coria lost them all. Coria clearly wasn't playing with the same swagger and confidence as before. Starting in July, the service yips starts becoming a major obstacle to his game. By the end of the year, with his results starting to go into freefall, it's clear that he has a problem.
2006: Coria's service yips problems get worse and worse, with only the occasional respite. Despite his problems, he managed a third round at the Australian Open and a quarter final in Monte Carlo, where he was winning matches despite serving 20+ double faults. His results then went well down, and after a first round retirement at the US Open, he was gone from the main tour for some time.
2007-2009: Sporadic returns, on both the challenger circuit and the main tour, including a final French Open appearance in 2008 after Roddick's withdrawal, but barely won any matches. Service yips problems still plagued his game. He retires in April 2009.
He also went through 11 coaches:
Gustavo Luza
Mariano Monachesi
Franco Davin
Alberto Mancini
Fabian Blengino
Gabriel Markus
Jose Perlas
Jose Higueras
Horacio De La Pena
Hernan Gumy
Martin Rodriguez
