Kenneth Carlsen - Career

Career

Carlsen began playing tennis at age nine, and in his teens became one of the best juniors in the world. He finished as no. 3 in the world in 1991. He turned full-time professional in 1992, and his breakthrough as senior in a major tournament came at the Copenhagen Open where he beat top-20 player Alexander Volkov in the first round. Later that year, he reached the final in Brisbane—-only his fourth ATP tournament. His debut in the 1993 Australian Open confirmed his position among the best players in the world as he went to the fourth round. The same year he reached his career-best singles ranking as World No. 41 in June. Since 1993 he was for most of the time ranked within the Top 100. In 1994 he played the most famous match of his career when he beat Stefan Edberg in five sets at Wimbledon.

In 1996 he reached the final of the tournament that triggered his career, Copenhagen Open, but lost to Cedric Pioline. The next year he reached the final in Auckland, but this time lost to Jonas Bjorkman. This saw his ranking shoot up 20 spots to World No. 52. In 1999, Carlsen reached the final in Newport, but lost to Chris Woodruff.

In 2000 he suffered from a serious shoulder injury, and underwent surgery twice. As a result he did not play any tournaments that year. His recovery was relatively slow, and he could not return to professional tennis until June 2001. His long absence from the sport, however, did not seem to affect his playing negatively. In 2002 he won his second ATP tournament in Tokyo, and in 2005 he won the Regions Morgan Keegan Championship in Memphis at almost 32 years old. His resurgence saw him in June 2005 become World No. 50.

Carlsen rarely played doubles, but reached three ATP doubles finals in his career. In Copenhagen with Frederik Fetterlein in 1997 (lost to Andrei Olhovskiy/Brett Steven), Tashkent, Uzbekistan with Sjeng Schalken in 1998 (lost to Stefano Pescosolido/Laurence Tieleman), and Beijing with Michael Berrer in 2006 (lost to Mario Ancic/Mahesh Bhupathi).

He played a total of 46 Grand Slam events during his career, and he holds the record for most first-round exits; 30.

On June 27, 2007 he announced that he would retire from professional tennis, and he played his last ATP match in first round of the Stockholm Open on October 10, 2007. The week after, he played his final professional tennis match at a Challenger tournament in Kolding, Denmark.