Inside Stricker's rise, struggle & path back to the top

The 2023 Swiss Indoors Basel is a memorable tournament for Dominic Stricker. It is where the home favourite earned one of his two Top 10 wins and reached his lone ATP 500 quarter-final. But it is also where the lefty’s trajectory changed in the wrong direction.

During the tournament, Stricker began feeling pain in his lower back.

“It was still quite okay. It was not the kind of pain where there was no chance to play,” Stricker told ATPTour.com. “It was always there. I was still able to compete.”

Shortly thereafter, Stricker played in the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF and performed “very well”, reaching the semi-finals against eventual champion Hamad Medjedovic.

“[I] woke up on the morning of the semi-finals and I was nearly not able to move,” said Stricker, who retired during the second set. “It didn't really make sense to keep on playing, so that's why I stopped there. And then we did all the checks, and we couldn't really find anything. Then it was just a pretty long waiting game.”

Stricker did not play another match until June because of the pain. In just a few months he went from breaking into the Top 100 of the PIF ATP Rankings for the first time to not being able to compete.

“It was very difficult, because I came from my top level, my best level, my best ranking, to one of my worst moments, if not the worst moment of my career so far,” Stricker said. “I was out for six months. I knew that my ranking would drop. I knew that I was not going to come back like I played before. It all just needed its time.”

^{Photo Credit: Peter Staples/ATP Tour}
This week Stricker is competing in the United Cup for Switzerland as the World No. 300, largely due to the time he missed. While away from the sport, the five-time ATP Challenger Tour titlist was unable to play golf, so he began cooking a bit, enjoying Thai Red Curry. He also enjoyed spending time with his girlfriend and focussing on “the little things”.

“It was weird for me just to not be able to do what I did for the past five years. You're out of tennis for such a long time. It was not easy,” Stricker said. “Then you spend time with your physio and with the doctors. You spend time in the gym that you're used to. But not as much as you do in that time. And then after one, two months, you just want to go back and play.”

One year on from finishing his 2023 season in Jeddah, he ended 2024 playing an ITF World Tennis Tour event, a big change.

“[It was] tough. Really tough. It’s been quite a long time from the injury to get everything going again. And then after a few months, you start thinking ‘When will we get back? When will we finally be able to play again?’” Stricker said. “Everything just gets longer and longer. But then all of a sudden it got better and better. So, I was super happy to be on court again.”

Despite losing his first match of the season Saturday against Rolex Paris Masters finalist Ugo Humbert, the 22-year-old has been hard at work in Sydney under the watchful eye of coach Dieter Kindlmann.

“It's a very tough situation because I have been working for almost two years with him now and in the beginning, or until 2023, everything was going in the right direction,” Kindlmann said. “He had some success consistently. He was making improvements, and then we had this very bad back injury, which took us out for six months.

“I didn't expect him to take so long to get the feeling back. All the small details, what was kind of normal before, he had to work to get the trust back in his body, to get the confidence.”

Early in his career, Stricker has proven he can compete with the best players in the world. At the 2023 US Open he qualified and reached the fourth round. One of his wins came in a shocking upset of Stefanos Tsitsipas.

“There's some moments when he's in his zone, he plays amazing,” Kindlmann said.

“He has this talent. When he is in the zone, he can play freely. He has some weapons or some shots that you cannot learn, or that are very, very difficult to practise. This makes him so special.

“But what he has to learn and what we're working on, and I think he's getting better and better, [is that] everything is about consistency. You cannot have some bad practices. You need the attitude always to be high. You cannot drop too much to learn. He's still very young — also, mentally young — to understand… you cannot breathe. You have to always be on the pedal.”

That has shown in the pair’s training sessions in Sydney. Stricker works hard, but it also laid back and enjoys a lighthearted joke. During practice, Kindlmann has made sure to keep his charge focussed.

“I am really serious because I was a hard worker, and I believe in consistent work. But I have to find the balance,” said Kindlmann, the former World No. 130. “He has to learn when he can switch on and when he can switch off. Work is the first part, and when work is done, then you can bring in the fun part. But it's still stuff that is biting us in the [behind] sometimes. In this case, because it gets too funny, and this is then my part to say, ‘Dominic, come on, we have to work on this stuff’.

“This is challenging. But I don't want him to be totally serious on the other side, because then you also take away his special weapons and also his game style.”

Stricker hopes to show the world that this week at the United Cup. The lefty will take on Italian Flavio Cobolli on Sunday. What does Kindlmann believe fans still getting to know his player should know about him?

“He has a very nice personality, very polite to everybody. He has this game style, [and] he can inspire people, and can have some shots that the people in the stadium want to see,” Kindlmann said. “But he has to learn. It's not only about the special shots, but also this whole package has to come together, and that's why I really hope he can stay healthy now and we can make the progress that we started two years ago.”