Marat Safin wanted to make sure we did not overlook how hard he had worked over 12 years as a professional to be able to make playing tennis look as easy as he did. And he went out of the sport yesterday trying everything he could to stay with a 20-year-old who is the epitome of its brutal vogue, eventually losing 6-4, 5-7, 6-4.

When Safin was Juan Martín del Potro’s age, he had won his first grand-slam tournament, and like the Argentinian, it was the US Open, where he defeated Pete Sampras in 2000 in a manner every bit as mind-boggling as Del Potro’s success two months ago against Roger Federer in New York. That the Russian could repeat that triumph only once more, against Lleyton Hewitt in the final of the 2005 Australian Open, was due to his brittle temperament, the wrist injury that cost him the best part of the 2003 season and being probably too good for his own good.

Yes, the image most carry of the 29-year-old who spent a year saying goodbye is that of splintered rackets and colourful outbursts; but who, Federer apart in the past decade, had more gold in his racket arm or a game of such rounded artistry?

His farewell press conference was a masterpiece of spontaneous affection to those who sat in judgment on him — “a lot of the guys in here have been great to me, which is nice because it’s a very cruel world,” he said — and lucidity about the toll the sport can take.

True, you would not have been surprised had it been Safin, rather than Andre Agassi, who unravelled, for he tumbled into the seventies in the world rankings six years ago but kept it all together.

“You’re stressed 24/7,” he said of tennis. “This is what I hate about it. It is just too much. There is no rest for the brain. In a different sport, soccer, hockey, basketball, you sign a contract, and no matter how you played, you play decent, you make your money. Here it’s all up to exact moment. It’s a tough living.”

Now, as he said, “I gotta move my ass, I have to be really smart and move very fast with the decisions I’m going to make.”

Tennis is a poorer place this week. Fabrice Santoro, the French magician, retired and said it was as if he had gone into mourning. Safin was not so melancholy. The reaction of the crowd — a full house for a Wednesday afternoon was testament to his popularity — was generous, as it should have been. The Russian asked that we remembered his decency and that after such a career, he had not made a single enemy. That, in itself, is worth treasuring.