BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Former U.S. Open champion Juan Martin Del Potro will have a third operation on his left wrist on Thursday after playing only four matches this year, the Argentine said on Monday.
Del Potro took the decision with his U.S. doctor Richard Berger after exhausting all other options to rid himself of the problem and get back to playing.
"I have the support of my doctor who let me make other consultations and in fact all those roads lead me to the same place and the same objective," the big right-hander said in a video on Youtube.
"If I want to return to tennis I have to face surgery again and I will do that with the doctor I have faith in who cured my right hand," added Del Potro, who won the U.S. Open in 2009 and the Olympic bronze medal in 2012.
Del Potro made a comeback from a second operation on his wrist at the Sydney tournament in January in which he lost in the quarter-finals, but still felt pain when he played his two-handed backhand.
The 26-year-old withdrew from the Australian Open and tried another comeback in Miami where he lost in the first round before deciding he needed to get his wrist right regardless of whether he played tennis professionally again.
Del Potro is unlikely to be fit for his country's Davis Cup quarter-final at home to world number one Novak Djokovic's Serbia from July 17-19.