Dinara Safina's climb-back from obscurity - Part 1
Dinara Safina has been one player who has constantly had to defend her place and position in the world of tennis. Yes, she had the talent and ability to be the greatest woman tennis player of all time but she has always had to face one obstacle or the other
that has stopped her from ever reaching her full potential.
The Russian tennis star is now ready to take another shot at her career. She will be appearing in next month’s ASB Classic, becoming the highest profile unseeded player in history to be taking part in the tournament. All eyes will be on her during the event
and there will be plenty of voices to cheer for her. However, where she has plenty of supporters there will also be people standing in the wings just waiting for the smallest of missteps from the player. She has experienced plenty of tearing down from critics
over the years and her comeback will probably be no different.
Dinara has always been under a lot more pressure than her colleagues. She has not only had to strive hard to fit in her brother, Marat Safin’s, huge shoes but has had to work her way out of the his shadow to carve a separate identity for herself. She had
to fight constantly against simply being known for her talent rather than for being Marat’s little sister.
Her rise in the tennis World was an amazing one to watch. Her passion for the game burnt bright for anyone to see. It was this determination and the fire to prove herself, that got her the World Number One spot in 2009. However, this achievement wasn’t enough
for the critics to accept her talent. They maintained that Safina did not deserve the spot because no matter how well and consistently she had performed; she had yet to win a Grand Slam title.
Yes, it’s true that at the time the women’s rating were a mess. However, perhaps it was a little unfair for people not to acknowledge the fact that the tennis star had emerged as the top dog from all that chaos. The ratings may not have been that great a
judging factor at the time but it still had required some amount of talent for the player to have made it to the top.
This year has seen Safina consistently sliding down the rankings due to back injuries and poor form. The 24 year old, who is now ranked 63rd in the world, will be participating in next month’s tournament largely unheralded and unseeded. The event
will be taking place in Auckland, New Zealand.
The player, who was Number 1 for a total of 26 weeks in 2009, has made it into the quarterfinals of only two tournaments this season. This is a very sharp contrast indeed to her performance last year, when she reached the finals of both the Australian and
French Opens and Wimbledon’s semi-finals as well. She had been having a great year but then disaster struck at the Cincinnati tournament in August last year. It turned out that Safina had torn a muscle in her lower back.
She was heavily relying on pain medication to get her past the pain from her stress fracture and to the finals of the Open but luck was not on her side. She ended her season disastrously after losing three of her four matches at the Open. “It was tricky,
using the painkillers from the US Open until the end of the year. I tried everything to play, but I didn't think it was so serious. At the end, it was really serious. It was my fault,” says the Russian.
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