Every conversation with American tennis player Sebastian Korda eventually arrives at some version of the same question: How are you feeling?
It’s been that sort of journey for Korda, 25, who was once, and perhaps is still, one of the brighter prospects in the sport.
“I missed Wimbledon in 2023. I missed three months last year. I missed about three to four this year,” he said last fall during a phone interview from Prague, his European training base.
“Mentally, it has been pretty tough.”
Korda, the son of two pros, one of them a Grand Slam champion, with two sisters in professional golf, one a world No. 1., has the lineage and genes for success, and the pressure for failure to feel all the more intense. What he has not had the past three years is his health.
This past week at the Miami Open, he has shown what he can do when he does have it. Korda knocked off world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz on the way with a display of the smooth, controlled aggression, flat power and dexterity that makes his tennis stand apart from his American compatriots — when his body allows him to put it on full display.
In his next match, against Martin Landaluce, Korda led 6-2, 6-6(6-5) with a match point on his serve to reach his first ATP Masters 1000 quarterfinal in a year. Landaluce, unencumbered by pressure, hit a return winner. Then he won the tiebreak and Korda’s lower back gave out. He managed to come from 0-3 down in the decider to get back to 3-3, but was broken by Landaluce in the 10th game to lose 2-6, 7-6(6), 6-4.
His talent has never been in doubt. His body and brain have met plenty of them.
Korda has found it hard to get out of the tennis netherworld in which so many elite players who go through a series of injuries find themselves: facing tough draws in the early rounds of smaller events, while struggling to balance matchplay and fitness. It is one of so many catch-22s in tennis. These players need matches to regain their rhythm and their strength, but as they make their way back from injury, they can get worn down — or even risk further injury — if they play too much.
Last fall, at the Shanghai Masters, another ATP Masters 1000, Korda dropped a match he likely should have won to Zizou Bergs of Belgium. After another month on the sidelines, it was his sixth match in 12 days, in his third tournament back across two countries.
After a mini training block in Prague, he returned to the circuit in search of tennis stability, at a time of year in which it is hard to find. The next of the Grand Slams, the tournaments the players care most about, was four months away. They were transitioning from the prestigious end-of-summer outdoor events in China, last year played in especially hot and humid conditions, to the oddball indoor circuit around Europe’s wintry European capitals that ends the season for all but the top eight players.
But a sequence of tournaments on indoor hard courts, quick and consistent, was built for someone like Korda, who enjoys faster surfaces and does not have to concern himself with how the elements will affect his slow reoptimization of his body and his world ranking. In 2024, he was world No. 15; by late last fall, he thought he would have to qualify for the Nordic Open in Stockholm.
That was something he hadn’t done in a long while. Then Grigor Dimitrov, a top-20 player also in recovery (from a torn pectoral muscle) withdrew. It opened up a spot for Korda in the main draw.
“You just kind of have to restart. You’ve got to climb that mountain again,” he said. “I’ve got to put my head down, keep working hard. It definitely humbles you.”
Working hard and enduring is one test for Korda. The biggest is whether he still has that rare mix of fluidity and power that not long ago had people thinking he was America’s best shot at breaking the country’s 22-year men’s Grand Slam singles title drought. When Korda is at the height of his powers, like he was against Alcaraz, he can beat opponents from every spot on the court, floating over it as only the greats can do. He can crank his serve at 130 mph. He can coax a volley onto a pin from just about any position.
Reared by two Czech tennis stars in Florida — his mother Regina was a top-30 player; his father Petr rose to No. 2 in the 1990s and won the 1998 Australian Open — his game combines the power and athleticism associated with American tennis and the finesse and point construction of his homeland. He won the Australian Open junior title in 2018, and his game, at its best on fast surfaces, appeared especially well-suited to grass, a surface he loves.
Sebastian Korda’s agile power and loose finesse make him a formidable player. (Hugo Arnald / Getty Images)
Five years later, he appeared on the cusp of a huge breakthrough.
He gave Novak Djokovic all he could handle in the final of the Adelaide International in January 2023, holding a match point against the greatest men’s player of the modern era before losing in three sets. At the Australian Open, he knocked off Daniil Medvedev in the third round, back when that was a major accomplishment, and upset Hubert Hurkacz in the round of 16. That set up a winnable quarterfinal, against Karen Khachanov.
But in the second set, the pain from an ailing wrist that Korda said had been bothering him for months became acute. He retired, down two sets and 3-0 in the third.
The injury didn’t require surgery, but Korda missed the next three months. He took advantage of the recovery time to work intensely on getting stronger, adding about 15 pounds to his lithe frame. He struggled on the clay, but then got to the semifinals at Queen’s in London and declared himself ready to challenge for Wimbledon, where he had made the fourth round in 2021.
In an interview a few days later, he said he had gotten “a little ahead of myself,” but believed in his grass-court prowess.
“I definitely, you know, do consider myself one of the top grass players,” he said then. “I have a game for it, so it’s just getting the experience — and there’s a lot of great players who are going to be very tough.”
He lost in the first round, as he got used to his bulked-up physique while gaining the confidence that he could play without injuring his wrist again. The process would take another year.
A wrist injury is one of tennis’ most crushing. It is one end of a player’s kinetic chain, the end most connected to their racket. After the pain has subsided and the injury has healed, it takes even longer to feel psychologically confident in fully using that chain, even if it doesn’t hurt.
“There’s still a lot of that hasn’t really come back,” Korda said during an interview in January 2024, more than seven months after his initial comeback. “Returning off the forehand, or forehand volleys, just aren’t what they used to be. But slowly but surely, more reps, more matches, and you get better.”
By the summer of 2024, he seemed ready for another assault on the top echelon. He won the ATP 500 tournament in Washington, D.C., and made the semifinals of the Canadian Open, a Masters 1000. But after a second-round loss to Tomáš Macháč at the U.S. Open, Korda largely disappeared. He resurfaced in October, with a picture taken from a hospital bed as he emerged from elbow surgery.
Needless to say, wrists and elbows are important joints to any tennis player. Korda did not play again until 2025’s curtain-raising Adelaide International, where he made the final again before losing to Félix Auger-Aliassime.
It was an auspicious start to another year that took a hopeful trajectory before arcing down into more rehab. Korda was already feeling banged up, with some discomfort in his core and some increasing pain in his shin, but he figured he could win enough matches to hang around the top 25.
“Just keep doing the same thing,” he said. “Play the tournaments, wanting to just be competitive.”
For a while it worked. He made last year’s Miami Open quarterfinals, where he lost to Djokovic, and even collected a handful of wins on clay. But after a third-round loss at the French Open, Korda was out again. His shin pain had evolved into a stress fracture that landed him in a boot, and on crutches, for four weeks. During the downtime, he tried to maintain his feel for the ball by hitting while sitting in a chair.
He didn’t play again until August, at the Winston-Salem Open in N.C., ultimately withdrawing in the semifinals before his match started. At the U.S. Open, he retired with a back spasm after two sets of his first-round match against Cameron Norrie.
The injury turned out not to be serious. After a couple more weeks of rest and training, he headed to Asia on a mission to climb back up the tennis mountain – again. The results were fine. Three wins and three losses, including a quarterfinal loss at the Japan Open to Taylor Fritz. No shame in that — Fritz, who reached the final in Tokyo where he lost to Carlos Alcaraz, is the top American man. The position that many thought an injury-free Korda would hold by now.
Instead, Korda was thankful that he is playing at all, with only minor, manageable pain in his wrist and his shin. He said he has learned his lesson about pushing through it.
“Don’t push what doesn’t need to be pushed,” he said. “If you stop early enough, it doesn’t become a bigger headache in the future.”
Sebastian Korda’s willingness to play through pain has stayed his ascent back toward the top of tennis. (Hannah Fountain / Camerasport via Getty Images)
Korda likes to joke that he is the worst athlete in his family. Nelly, one of his sisters, is a two-time major champion, Olympic gold medalist and former world No. 1 in golf. Jessica, the other, holds six LPGA titles, but like her brother, saw her career afflicted by injuries. Their father won that tennis major; their mother represented Czechoslovakia at the Olympic Games. Korda is in a relationship with Ivana Nedvěd, daughter of Ballon d’Or winner Pavel.
Matching the accomplishments of Nelly or Petr might be tough. But he would rather the joke not land with some heartache, the way it does now. He would rather find that elusive balance of rhythm, fitness and form.
“I feel like I’ve just had one long off-season this entire year, just rehabbing and then practicing and rehabbing and practicing,” he said.
This season, he was on the match court and flowing once again — before his body took him off it.
