WIMBLEDON, England — No matter what players say in front of a microphone, there is no shortage of schadenfreude in professional tennis.

In a sport where the big spoils do not trickle down far, one fewer competitor at the top means more trophies and goodies for those who remain.

But if you mention Juan Martín del Potro to most of the game’s leading men, their expressions do not lie. There is usually a slight wince, sometimes even a full shake of the head. There is genuine, unmistakable sympathy and the feeling that no champion — not even the one who once crushed all those groundstroke winners past them — deserves to have to deal with this.

In the men’s game, del Potro is the great lost talent of this bright and shiny tennis decade. He is the consistent and huge hitter from Tandil, Argentina, who could have made the Big Four into the Big Five or — who knows? — maybe even reshaped the Big One (in this Novak Djokovic moment) into the Big Two.