Clijsters doubtful for French after Fed Cup injury
The good news for Belgium after their 3-2 win over Estonia in their World Group Play-off tie is that they’ll be back among the Fed Cup elite next year. The bad news is that their chances of cheering Kim Clijsters on to a French Open title this year just got a whole lot slimmer.
The world No. 11 faces up to six weeks on the sidelines after suffering a ruptured muscle in her left foot during her singles rubber against the little-known Maret Ani on Saturday. The injury occurred during the second set against in the opening rubber of the tie, but Clijsters played on to take the match 6-4, 6-2 and provide her team with a 1-0 lead, before heading to hospital for scans.
It doesn’t take any complex mathematics to work out that a six-week recovery period means Clijsters is in real doubt of being fit, let alone match-fit, when Roland Garros begins on May 23rd.
It doesn’t look like the decision on when the US Open champion’s return to the court will be rushed just because there is a Grand Slam around the corner either, if we listen to Clijsters’ physio, Sam Verslegars.
“We’re going to try and recover properly, which means not trying to speed things up, because if her injury gets chronic, then we’ve got a real problem,” Verslegars is quoted as saying on the Fed Cup website. “We’ll go easy with the rehab and then see how long it takes.”
Even before sustaining the injury, Clijsters had withdrawn from the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart this week in order to spend more time with her family and get some more training under her belt. The question now is when, and if, we’ll see the mum-of-one back in competition before the French Open begins.
Clijsters had formed part of a full-strength Belgian squad for the weekend’s tie against Estonia, which also included another former world No. 1 in Justine Henin, top-20 player Yanina Wickmayer as well as Belgian No. 4 Kirsten Flipkens.
It’s a quartet that, if they remain available for Fed Cup duties next year, stands a strong chance of improving on their 2006 runners-up performance to current champions Italy. But with Clijsters’ injury and Henin breaking the little finger on her left hand in training for the play-off tie, one has to wonder whether that might be cause enough for one or both of the pair to review their participation in next year’s competition.
In Henin’s case, the damage could have been much worse, had the break occurred on her right hand it may have kept her out of action for several weeks. As it was, the injury, sustained while attempting to catch a volley while practising with Flipkens, initially ruled the Australian Open runner-up out of the singles rubbers for the tie.
Henin, however, eventually did play against Kaia Kanepi in the third rubber of the play-off, losing the match in three sets to the Estonian.
Belgium ultimately won the tie 3-2, but for the country’s two biggest tennis stars it’s a victory that has come at a cost.
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