He knows what it’s like to challenge Roger Federer on the big stages of tennis and reached number 73 in the world ranking, but his life today happens on the other hand: he is a powerful financial broker who thinks less and less about the Swiss and more about Javier Milei, the ultraliberal president of Argentina.
«In my case, tennis was not a real passion. If I had been, I would still be playing or I would be training someone,” admits Argentine Diego Hartfield during an interview with CLAY.
“And it didn’t cost me anything to get out of tennis at the age of 30,” adds Hartfield, who is amazed by the case of the Mexican Santiago González: “He is at the first level of doubles, and on the circuit he was like my brother. We traveled all the time together, we trained together, we did thousands of tours together. And he’s still there, while I feel like I played tennis in another life…”
“I have been in finance for ten years and have been a former tennis player for 13,” adds Milei’s admirer: “We are heading in the right direction.”
Hartfield, 43 years old, reached number 73 in the world ranking in the 2007, 2009 and 2010 seasons, although in those years there were so many quality Argentine players that he could not fulfill his dream of playing in the Davis Cup.
In 2006, the draw landed Roger Federer in the first round at Roland Garros, and two years later the same thing happened at the Australian Open. In none of the matches did he manage to take a set from the Swiss, who was in the best years of his career, although he took him to a tie break in two sets in Paris.
Today, installed in his office in Oberá, in the heat of Misiones, in the tropical north of Argentina, he looks back and reflects.
«You tend to normalize things when you are there, see? One tends to believe that what is happening to you is normal. Then you reach the top 100 and well, you worked your whole life to be there and everything is so progressive that it becomes difficult for you to say ‘wow, look where I am!'”
“Maybe now it’s easier to say, ‘wow, look where I was.’ Although you never stop comparing yourself, because in my best moment I was number 8 in the country and at that time we were 13 in the top 100. I was not even close to playing the Davis Cup. But today I am number eight in the world of finance in Argentina? No, no, not even close.
The same thing happened to the young Hartfield, nicknamed “Gato” during his playing years, as to Milei: a major Argentine crisis, in this case that of 2001, triggered his interest in economics and finance.
«I don’t know whether to use the word poverty, but I knew how to live in scarcity. I knew how to be in the bad times and nothing happened to me. Therefore, I have a certain ability to take risks. Even though I consider myself a conservative guy, my position is that life goes on. I have lost money, I have won. In tennis matches I have lost money and I have won. So, I really like money, but it doesn’t drive me crazy.
Being a successful professional tennis player in the early years of the new century allowed Hartfield to help his family as Argentina emerged from its serious crisis.
“I paid for one of my sisters’ 15th birthday, and I had a house here in Buenos Aires and they lived with me when they studied.”
«We were a struggling middle class family in the crisis of 2001. And I, honestly, with tennis I saw a chance to earn money, to have a job. And I liked that idea. Now… What would have happened if I studied economics instead of being a tennis player? Today, with 20 years of profession, it would be another story. “We don’t know.”
He wouldn’t be, that’s for sure, Milei’s finance minister, says Hartfield, laughing.
“I don’t think so. I’m not a very technical guy. But hey… When I played tennis I wasn’t a very technical guy either. “I was trying to be more on the side of common sense and perception.”
Hartfield feels identified with the Argentine Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, for also being “a trader.”
“I am a stock market producer agent, I am dedicated to opening accounts in stock companies for individuals and legal entities and I help them manage their finances through the capital market,” he explains.
After years as a partner at Net Finance, Hartfield returned to work alone, and says that things are not bad for him: “I have about $20 million in portfolio for about a hundred clients. Mostly Argentinian, but I also open accounts in Uruguay and the United States.
Effort is the mark of his life, much more than talent, he says.
“Tennis didn’t come easy for me at all, I did everything with a lot of effort, I didn’t have the facilities that guys at my level had,” he remembers.
«I think that my strength came from the side of the head, from a very great effort, from a very great conviction and from a constant search to improve. But I had no shots to save me. And that also helped me make the decision to retire. I am retiring after an injury that sent me to the thousandth position in the ranking, and I did not have the shots, the game to return as quickly as Willy Cañas, Juan Chela or Guillermo Coria himself did after their doping cases.
Tennis wasn’t Hartfield’s passion, but that doesn’t mean his memories of those years are bad.
«I have very good memories. I don’t have great friends. Yes, very good acquaintances and good contacts. At the time we were many players and we were super supportive on trips. You could have disagreements like with anyone, but we faced each other many times on the court with friends. And many times it was our turn to warm up and then you had to play with it.”
«Sharing a hotel in times of poverty or not wealth, we can say. We learned from below, we valued things from each game. “I have great memories of my time as a tennis player.”
As passionate about the world of finance, Hartfield has a particular focus on Milei’s government.
“They are doing everything they had to do to correct very serious macroeconomic errors and save a tremendous crisis, they managed a practically bankrupt country,” he analyzed.
«The great challenge is always social, because the debts of many years of mismanagement are still being paid for. All these transformations take time, we have to see how much political support there may be in the medium term, but we are heading in the right direction,” added the former tennis player.
There’s something very special about Milei, Hartfield believes.
«The president is an economist, and there are very few cases in the history of the world in which an economist became president. An economist does not give so much priority to politics, and that is good for making the necessary adjustments. Then, obviously, there are a lot of things I don’t like about Milei, but the emphasis on the fiscal surplus is very positive.
«I am very optimistic, very. If I had chosen a way to do things today, it would be this way. I always said it. You have to be a very strong communicator with a high level of popular conviction, someone who is capable of putting the blade of the knife into surgery and making people say ‘ok, I’m going to hold on’. If not, it was very difficult.
But as much as he likes economics and finance, Hartfield is a former top-level tennis player. He has memories and he has an opinion.
Rafael Nadal’s frustrated attempt to return to tennis in 2024 generates curiosity and amazement for the Argentine.
«Do you know what’s going through my head? Maybe he is much more passionate than I was. For me, my passion was being able to challenge myself to do something else completely outside of tennis. That is my achievement for me. And many times I see tennis players insisting. And I wonder if it could be that they don’t dare to do anything else.
When he has to choose between Federer, Nadal and Djokovic, the Argentine does not hesitate.
«I was always a Djokovic fan. Always. I always said I was going to be the greatest of all. I really liked him, I still really like his way of playing. If I have to watch a tennis match today, I watch Djokovic. And he is also a histrionic guy, who has his past, he lived through the war as a child.
Is Djokovic the greatest in history?
«The number of titles is what defines it. I think there is no doubt, and the vast majority of the titles, Diokovic won competing against Nadal and Federer. “Federer, in his early years, had much less tough competition.”
The progressive disappearance of the one-handed backhand is something that seems natural and even desirable to Hartfield.
«Tennis evolved a lot from the two-handed backhand. And today the players are much weaker on the forehand side than on the backhand side, they are more attackable on the right.”
The growing Saudi power in tennis is accepted by Hartfield as the financial “broker” that he is: “I am one of those who believe that we must follow the waves. If you oppose too much you end up losing.
Hartfield doesn’t believe in ethical qualms.
«There are a lot of very unfair things in the world. You like to drink tea, but people are exploited on tea plantations… I don’t know what conditions some people in China work under, and yet we are consumers of a lot of things that are produced in China.
