Flashback: ATP stars reveal calloused hands in 2017 shoot

In a 2020 to forget, in ways, many are harking back to yesteryear. Given the shortfall of tennis in general this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of fans and observers have turned to regarding outstanding matches and images from the past.

Among those visuals worth another look: a 2017 photo essay that appeared in Germany's Tennis magazine (no relation to this publication you're reading), which displays the quite-calloused hands of top ATP players. In this case, each picture certainly carries the value of thousand words.

The image set was captured by Juergen Hasenkopf:

Squarely in the mix were stars such as Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic, already ballyhooed for the all-time singles majors crown they were (read: are) collectively chasing. The likes of Andy Murray, Kei Nishikori, Dominic Thiem, Philipp Kohlschreiber, Tommy Haas, and Juan Martin del Potro.

Aficionados the world over probably got wistful just reading a couple of those names, given Delpo's injury-addled outage from the game and Haas' official retirement within a year of the photo reveal.

What's intriguing about some pairs of the images within this photo essay is the similarity between them: Federer and Kohlschreiber have the same placement of a large callous on their palms, whereas Nadal and Thiem harbor nearly-mirrored, smaller callouses just below each of their last three phalanges on their dominant hands.

Scope more of Hasenkopf's work, and chase that with an Instagram follow for the venerable photographer, who continues to shoot the sport and delivered a batch of environmental images at Roland-Garros in September.

It's one thing when a great photog snaps all the kinetic energy of a single stroke, the player's full weight thrown into the act. It's another when they take you into the courtside photo pit for a behind-the-lens view. Here's to the sum of it all.