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Remember Jenson Brooksby?
It’s been awhile. But the American, now 24, is expected back at the Australian Open in January.
His case is an interesting one, and it’s probably surprising to see him on the entry list with his protected ranking of No. 52 after he kind of disappeared off the face of the planet.
Brooksby, whose career high of No. 33 came in June 2022, doesn’t currently have a ranking.
His last match came exactly two years ago in Melbourne, when he beat Casper Ruud in the second round but lost to Tommy Paul in the third round.
After that, Brooksby found himself suspended because he missed three “whereabouts tests”, which is when the dope testers come to your door unannounced. Players are supposed to give the ITIA a one-hour window each day when they are available. But three times, they came and he wasn’t available.
He was suspended in Oct. 2023 for 18 months, and took a voluntary provisional suspension. The original suspension was backdated to July 2023 and was due to end on Jan. 4, 2025.
Brooksby appealed the suspension to the CAS, on the basis that he accepted two of the missed tests but contested the third.
He maintain that one of the failed “whereabouts” was not his fault. And that one basically came down to his trying to save a few bucks on a hotel room.
New information was then submitted for the appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). And the anti-doping authorities – the ITIA, in consultation with WADA – agreed that Brooksby’s degree of fault should be re-evaluated in the wake of the new information.
No details were disclosed about WHAT that new information was all about, “due to the nature of the new information“. But apparently it was convincing enough for the anti-doping authorities to downgrade the suspension.
In the end, they reduced it from 18 months to 13 months – judging that the suspension began on February 4, 2023 instead of July 2023, and would end on March 3, 2024 instead of Jan. 2025. And the CAS appeal was dropped.
So Brooksby could have returned to action, technically, at Indian Wells.
Except …. that didn’t happen. And he STILL hasn’t returned.
Rare protected ranking for a suspended player
There are no clues on his social media; beyond a couple of sponsors’ posts back when the suspension reduction was announced (including IN Indian Wells), he has disappeared – which just shows you what if you want to go off the grid, it’s not that hard.
Brooksby has had wrist surgeries on both wrists, and he played through pain in that 2023 Australian Open.
His plan was to start playing tournaments late in the 2023 season, per this interview in July, 2023. But then the suspension hit after the case was decided in October.
Normally, a player who has served an anti-doping suspension would not be eligible to use a protected rankings (ask Simona Halep about that one).
But perhaps because of the two wrist surgeries, he was deemed eligible. We’ll effort on clarification for that one.
The protected ranking he’s using looks to be from his numbers in March, 2023.
In the end, after all of the cost and stress of appealing, he’s returning to action basically at the same time as he would have, under the original suspension.
But at this point, he won’t have played tennis in two years. And that’s a big event to return in – and best-of-five, too.
And we’ve all seen what wrist issues can do; they put an end to Dominic Thiem’s career at age 30.
But it’ll be another interesting storyline to follow in January. He’s entered in a Challenger in Canberra the first week of the season, in preparation for his AO return.
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