The final image of Juan Martin del Potro on a tennis court could have been his familiar headband resting over the net. Simple, poignant, understated and totally fitting with his elegant, injury-wracked career.

He laid it all out there, through four wrist surgeries and three knee operations. After one last defeat, he walked up to opponent Federico Delbonis in Buenos Aires in February 2022 and laid down his white headband.

Perfect.

But instead, at the end of a 2024 tennis season filled with goodbyes to an era’s greats, there had to be another one. “El Ultimo Desafio”: The Last Duel. Del Potro vs. Novak Djokovic, at the Parque Roca, also in Argentina’s capital.

Forgive yourself if you thought del Potro and tennis had already said goodbye.

Two years ago, del Potro learned that his father, Daniel — who served as his son’s longtime business manager and died in 2021 — had lost much of the fortune he’d accumulated during almost two decades on court. Del Potro won more than $25million (£19.7m) in his career and made millions more in sponsorship deals. He has said his dad lost much of it through bad investments, and left him with the debts.

This is where a long-term friendship with the greatest male player of the modern era can help.

For years, if players wanted to blow off steam — in the locker room, the player lounge, and maybe a hotel bar or nightclub or two — del Potro was their guy. What goes around, comes around. Djokovic, who is 16 months older than 36-year-old del Potro and has long been effusive with praise and love for the big Argentine, flew across an ocean to sell out a stadium this past weekend one last time.

There is an unfulfilled strand of tennis history in which del Potro’s career does not become an exercise in medical triage.

One September afternoon in 2009, when he climbed back against Roger Federer in the U.S. Open final to hand the five-time defending champion his first loss in New York in six years, del Potro looked like the future. He was a few days shy of his 21st birthday. That long, languid forehand. The smooth, cannon-like serve — for years one of the most beautiful motions in the game. Those were going to be with us for a while.

They were, and they weren’t.

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Fifteen years later, del Potro was still stroking that forehand and launching that serve this weekend in Buenos Aires. Yet he hadn’t played since that loss to Delbonis in the same city in 2022, itself his first match in three years. Injuries to his wrists and then his right knee forced him to miss long stretches of 2010, ’14, ’15 and ’19. He reached one more major final, losing to Djokovic in straight sets at the 2018 U.S. Open.

In an emotional video posted on social media ahead of the farewell match, del Potro spoke of the chronic pain he has endured since the first of his knee surgeries. He can’t walk up a set of stairs without pain, or enjoy a soccer kick-around. Sometimes it hurts to sleep. On the court with Djokovic, he moved in slow motion, though his opponent tried not to make him move at all.

The tennis retirement that Federer, Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal spent the last couple of years searching for was never on the cards for del Potro. He did not go through Murray’s heartbreak at missing one last Wimbledon singles run, nor did he get the Scot’s high of two improbable Olympic men’s doubles comebacks with Dan Evans this summer before Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul were too much and too young. Del Potro, like Dominic Thiem, another 2024 retiree, found the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic-Murray axis too much, with or without injury. Del Potro’s 20-51 record against the quartet, a 28 percent win rate, is one of the best in the sport.

He did not go through Nadal’s dispiriting final match loss to Botic van de Zandschulp of the Netherlands which helped take Spain out of the Davis Cup, nor the match point Nadal and Federer lost on the latter’s serve at the Laver Cup in 2022 before the bumps and the tears and the holding hands.

Seeing a sporting all-time great depleted is one thing. Seeing them flirt with the delusion that the magic might still be there is something more depressing.

Del Potro displayed none of that in Sunday’s 90-minute goof-around with Djokovic. They showed off each other’s quick hands with some volley rallies. He sent Djokovic chasing back and forth after soft volleys. He set him up for a ’tweener with a short lob.

Del Potro cannoned a few last forehands, the signature shot of his career. (Luis Robayo / AFP via Getty Images)

Djokovic returned the favor, standing still after rallying in the middle of the court, letting del Potro hit a last few howitzer forehands. Gabriela Sabatini and Gisela Dulko, two Argentine WTA greats, joined the fun for a few games. Diego Schwartzman, another Argentine tennis fave, came to watch. So did Carlos Tevez, one of the country’s soccer heroes.

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Djokovic and del Potro approached the end of the second set with Djokovic up to some high-jinks with a ball kid and then the umpire over some line calls, gifting his friend the point that took del Potro to one last match point, against the serve he last conquered in 2016 to send a weeping Djokovic out of the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

This was nothing like that, and that was fine. Djokovic roused the crowd, as if they needed it, and tapped a last serve over the net. Del Potro ambled onto his forehand and crushed it. Then it was his turn to cry on his friend’s shoulder as they embraced at the net, before del Potro pulled off his sky-blue wristbands and tossed them into the crowd.

He did something else, too. He told anyone who cared to listen how to say goodbye, one last time.

(Top photo: Marcelo Endelli / Getty Images)