Tommy Haas beat Roger Federer in last pro win. Now he turns his focus to BNP Paribas Open

On a Thursday afternoon in early February, Tommy Haas is behind a steering wheel waiting for one of his daughters in a pick-up line at her Los Angeles area school.

Five months have passed since his last professional tennis match, in Austria, and after more than two decades as a professional tennis player, Haas is in a transitional phase of his life.

Instead of rehabilitating from an injury, hitting the practice courts or working his way back into shape for the next event on the professional tennis circuit, he’s replaced that routine with other things he loves -- skiing or being a chauffeur to his kids.

“That’s sort of my new life when I’m home in LA, which I don’t mind,” he says. “It’s fun.”

Haas, once ranked as high as No. 2 in the world, believes he may have played his last match on the World Tour. He won’t make an official, grandiose announcement, but he says his nomadic lifestyle as a professional tennis player traveling the world for months at time is over.

Next month, Haas will become fully immersed in his second event as the tournament director at the BNP Paribas Open, which runs from March 5-18 at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden.

Haas, 39, was hired by tournament owner Larry Ellison to direct the annual event in June 2016. At the time, he was rehabilitating from a torn ligament between the second toe joint on his right foot and wanted to make one last comeback before walking away from the sport for good.

More:After ninth major surgery, BNP director Tommy Haas back on the court in Australia

After eight months rehabbing, while also working with the tournament staff in Indian Wells, Haas returned to the World Tour at the 2017 Australian Open. Haas lost the first three matches of his return, in Melbourne, Delray Beach and Miami, before defeating American prospect Reilly Opelka in Houston.

Though Haas was unable to play at Indian Wells due to being the tournament director, fans did get to see him play when Nick Kyrgios withdrew from his quarterfinal match against Roger Federer due to what Kyrgios described as food poisoning. 

To appease fans who had purchased tickets and were already in the Stadium 1 at the time of the withdrawal, Haas took the court and played an exhibition set against Canadian Vasek Pospisil, who had upset Andy Murray earlier in the tournament. Haas won the set, 6-4.

"With his status and stature in the game, people wanted to see that," said Steve Birdwell, the chief operating officer of Desert Champions LLC, which oversees the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. "They were disappointed that the (Federer-Kyrgios) match didn't happen, but at the same time we had a show, if you will, that made everybody happy.

"He brings a lot to the table for both sides, whether it's us because he's a player who is very in tune with the players and the Tour, or as a player perspective he lends a voice to the players." 

Into the summer months, Haas won matches in Monte Carlo, Munich and Rome, and his last win on tour came against Federer in Stuttgart, Germany, in front of a contingent of friends and family a few hours from Haas’s hometown of Hamburg.  

“It wasn’t really only about winning and losing this time,” Haas said. “It was more of going back to these places one more time, really enjoying it, having my family there, really taking it in as a last time as a competitor at these events.

“The last match that I won on tour will be against Roger Federer, so I’ll take that any day.”

A year ago, just prior to the Australian Open, Haas was less certain he was ready to walk away. Following his ninth major surgery, he felt physically rejuvenated, and his body was rested from months away from the grind of the circuit.

As he played out his final year on tour, which ended with a loss to Jan-Lennard Struff in Austria last August, Haas says he began to consider whether he wanted to continue living the lifestyle of a tennis professional, which meant not only constant travel and staying in tip-top shape but also being so mentally focused on preparing for each individual event that there left little time for much else.

“I appreciated the fact that the Indian Wells entire staff and team gave me the opportunity to do that,” Haas said of his final year on tour. “It was a very important thing for me, one more time after an annoying injury on my foot that required surgery, to come back and prove to myself that I could come back and play one more time.”

More:Serena Williams to play first tournament as a mother at BNP Paribas Open

Haas said that while he still does have the passion for the sport that has always been evident, and that he enjoys having the excuse to stay active and in shape, it is particularly difficult to get mentally prepared when he wasn’t playing constantly.

“The reality is when you don’t live and breathe as a professional tennis player does all the time,” he said, “it’s not so easy to say — after three, four, five months of not training like a professional —  I’m going to give myself a week to get back into the swing. It’s not that easy, it’s not like a team sport where if I could hit and train with the boys for a few weeks, I can tell my teammates and my coach, ‘Let me in for a few minutes to see what I can do, and the team and still prevail and win for us.’

“In this case, you have to go out there by yourself and you have to know that you’re going to be fit for 60 to 120 minutes, depending on your game and style of play. I don’t think I have that in me anymore.”

Haas now has a golden opportunity to direct the world’s fifth-largest annual tennis tournament into the future, with a billionaire owner who has shown his willingness to spend to make it one of the best, and most popular, sporting events on the planet.

Though Haas will likely be more fully immersed into the year-round preparation of the BNP Paribas Open with his inactivity on the court, he will still rely heavily on the operational staff in Indian Wells. As the tournament director, Haas will still travel to various events around the globe as an ambassador of the tournament and to bring back ideas relating to how to continually improve the Indian Wells event.

"We do have a solid core team here year-round, and he's constantly involved with emails, phone calls, texts, that type of stuff," Birdwell said. "I don't think it's bad that he's traveling and doing other things. I think that is an advantage for us. It's working really well."

Haas said the first year as tournament director was a steep learning curve, but that he enjoyed working behind the scenes of an event. He hopes he can have a large influence with the Indian Wells team on further improving the events in future years.

He still plans to play exhibition matches, and he’ll play on the Champions Tour, a circuit for retired pros that often feels more nostalgic than anything.

But his days as a professional tennis player are over. He wants to make room for things he didn’t have much time for previously, including the ski trip he took to Idaho in late January and the other he has scheduled this month in Colorado.

And it will surely include a more intense focus on the BNP Paribas Open.

“The reality is I’m turning 40 (on) April 3, and the body changes,” Haas said. “And I also want to enjoy my life after, with skiing and other things.

“Having a couple children now, and as they get older I want to be able to do certain things and it’s a wise move for me to not keep beating my body up.”

Tommy Haas

From: Hamburg, Germany

Trained: Bollettieri Academy, Bradenton, Fla.

Highest all-time rank: No. 2

All-time singles record: 569-338

Singles titles: 15

BNP Paribas Open

When: March 5-18, 2018

Where: Indian Wells Tennis Garden, 78-200 Miles Avenue, Indian Wells, Calif. 92210

Television: Tennis Channel and ESPN

Tickets: visit www.bnpparibasopen.com or call the Box Office at 800-999-1585. 

Andrew John covers tennis in the Coachella Valley and beyond for The Desert Sun and the USA TODAY Network. Email him at andrew.john@desertsun,com.