Diego Forlán on tennis: from beating Ruud van Nistlerooy at Man Utd to becoming an ATP Tour professional

Soccer players are an aggressive group. The need to win is never limited to tone.

So when Manchester United forwards Diego Forlán and Ruud van Nistelrooy faced all the options on a tennis court at Nike’s Portland headquarters during a 2003 pre-season tour, there was stress.

Sir Alex Ferguson and his United team-mates had been watching. Fergie appeared to have bet money on Forlán winning the pre-training tiebreaker fight.

“Everyone wanted to see who was going to win. I had all the pressure,” recalls Forlán, 45, who is preparing to make his debut in qualified tennis at his closest local event, Uruguay.

“Ruud played a lot, not as much as me, but he still knew how to play.”

After a couple of nerves on serve, Forlán beat Van Nistelrooy “in the end.”

What the now interim United manager didn’t know (the astute Ferguson had mostly already ignored a moment) was that Forlán had some pedigree.

First of all, for Forlán, tennis was once just fun. Upcoming retirement in 2019, abroadForlán had an extra year for tennis. Specialized in social and health benefits, he played with friends in the Montevideo club league.

His aggressive spirit was ignited once, and in 2023, the southpaw made his ITF Masters Excursion debut. He is now ranked 113th in the world in the over-45 division.

Greater praise came when he was given a wild card for the Uruguay Cup doubles on the ATP Challenger Tour, the level where Novak Djokovic and others compete.

“If you had asked me when I was playing football if I was going to play on the ATP Tour, I wouldn’t have imagined it,” said Forlán, who counts Boris Becker, Ivan Lendl and Goran Ivanisevic among his idols.

“I didn’t know if I was going to play tennis even though it was a sport that I really liked.”