You may not know Brian Baker, but you were supposed to.
Baker was ranked as high as No. 2 in the world as a junior. He had defeated the likes of Novak Djokovic and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, among other top tennis players, and at the age of 20, the Nashville native earned his biggest grand slam victory, beating ninth-seeded Gaston Gaudio in the first round of the 2005 U.S. Open.
“[At that point], I think like anybody else, I envisioned being a successful player, doing well at grand slams, being that kind of household American name,” Baker said. “But things don’t always turn out like you want them to and I had to learn that the hard way.”
The hard way is a mild description of a stretch of unthinkable frustration and pain. Baker hasn’t been back to Flushing since. His seemingly inevitable ascension was cruelly halted by numerous injuries, sidelining him from the tour for six years.
He had five operations, which included three different hip surgeries, a sports hernia surgery and reconstructive elbow surgery. Along with constant rehabilitation, Baker turned his focus to Belmont University, where he worked as an assistant tennis coach and took business classes.
“It definitely opened my eyes to other opportunities and you have to be realistic, once you’ve had as many surgeries as I had, maybe tennis wasn’t in the cards,” Baker said. “But I never got to that point where I said, ‘I’m done.’ I never said, ‘I don’t want it anymore.’ When you do something for so long, it’s what you love to do and what you always thought you were going to do, you don’t want to let it go, especially when something is taken away from you not of your own doing.”
Baker played on occasion, but not competitively, and watched former rivals blossom with similar gifts and greater luck. He didn’t like to play the guessing game, even if everyone else did. He knew that could have been him, but it didn’t matter. He just wanted another chance.
“I felt like if I was healthy, I would’ve had some pretty good success, but to help me not go crazy, I try not to think about that too much,” Baker said. “There were several frustrating times where you don’t know if you’re ever going to make it back, but I always told myself if I started feeling better I would give it one more go.”
After six years, his body finally began to cooperate. Baker first entered a low-level Futures event in Pittsburgh as an unranked qualifier last July and won the tournament without losing a set. He slowly worked up the chain in several other small tournaments before reaching his first ATP final in Nice this spring. He advanced to the second round at the French Open and saw his remarkable comeback peak with a fourth-round run at Wimbledon this summer.
He no longer looked like the player he used to be. He looked better.
“I’ve probably had more success quicker than I thought I would coming back,” Baker said. “I always thought I was a good player and was confident, but when you’re out as long as I was, it was just unknown how I would come back. I really just don’t take anything for granted and it makes it a lot sweeter now after what I’ve gone through than if I had just had success right away.”
Ranked 458th at the start of the year, Baker, 27, is now a career-high 70th in the world and will take on No. 94 Jan Hajek in the first round of the U.S. Open, having earned automatic entry to a grand slam for the first time in his career.
Even if nothing more is promised, a sense of control has returned. The racquet is in his hands and the pain is gone. The future is promising — again.