Top Tennis Player Back on the Court After Two Hip Replacements

Fernando Perez, formerly one of the top-ranked tennis players in the world and now a tennis club owner and tennis instructor, was having difficulty walking. He had so much pain it was hard to tie his shoes. He could not bend far enough to pick something up off the floor.

Now, after two hip replacements at Lehigh Valley Orthopedic Institute, Perez is back on the court (and on the golf course too). He feels so well that he’s thinking – at age 60 – of starting to train for a return to tournament-level tennis.

Perez’s surgeon was Eric Lebby, MD, Chief of the Division of Orthopedic Surgery with Lehigh Valley Orthopedic Institute. Dr. Lebby performs 800 hip and knee replacement surgeries each year.

Perez’s fast recovery is partly because he is a high-performance athlete in good condition, Dr. Lebby says, but that principle can apply to any patient. “I always explain to my patients the importance of maximizing personal health before undergoing total hip or total knee replacement surgery,” he says.

Perez won his first tennis tournament at age 9 in his native Mexico. He was a top-ranked tennis player at Louisiana State University, and he represented Mexico in the Davis Cup – known as the World Cup of men’s tennis. At one point in his doubles career, he notched a win against Boris Becker, who would go on to be ranked No. 1 in the tennis world.

“As an athlete, you get used to some pain, and my goal through my whole career was to never need surgery,” Perez said. He made it until five years ago, when he went to see Dr. Lebby. “I regret not going to him sooner,” Perez says.

“My cartilage was completely gone on one hip,” he says, “and there was only a little cartilage left on the other.” Cartilage is the connective tissue in joints that acts as a shock absorber.

Perez had his first hip replacement by Dr. Lebby in 2019, but he still had pain in his other hip, which steadily got worse. He got his second new hip from Dr. Lebby in February 2024.

“My recovery was really fast,” Perez says. “In a matter of three or four weeks, I was already doing most of my regular stuff.”

Now Perez is back to tennis – teaching several hours a day at his club, the Tennis Zone and Fitness Center in Quakertown. He also is back to his other passion, golf. “My distance on my golf shots was really deteriorating when I had the hip pain,” he says. “Now, I’m almost back to my previous distance.”

What is the next phase of his tennis career? It may be a return to tennis at the tournament level. “I continue to feel better, so I am considering starting to train for one of the seniors tennis tours,” he says.

Perez is extremely grateful to Dr. Lebby and everyone at Lehigh Valley Orthopedic Institute for the care he received, and for his ability to get back to regular activity quickly.

“I believe it is paramount to treat patients as if they are family,” says Dr. Lebby. “Our patients are never treated as numbers; they are treated as family. As a team, we provide the results of superior training to our patients with a boutique approach.”

Lehigh Valley Hospital is ranked 20th in the nation for orthopedic care and is the only hospital in the region nationally recognized for orthopedics, according to U.S. News & World Report.

The LVHN team consists of nearly 200 clinicians with expertise in complete musculoskeletal care including orthopedics, physiatry, pain management, chiropractic medicine and podiatry.

LVHN physicians are the leading clinicians for joint replacement surgeries and sports medicine procedures and LVHN is the most trusted orthopedic provider in our region.