Maria Sharapova not astonished by the withdrawal of athletes from major events – Tennis News
Former world number one, Maria Sharapova, isn’t astonished to witness withdrawals from big guns during the ‘Asian swings’ towards the end of the season. She understands the longevity of the season has caused many players to incur
injuries and fatigue issues that have caused them to stay out of action for quite a while.
The tours are already a bit too much and the introduction of London Olympics in the usual schedule just increased the stress on the top athletes, who are usually seen in the advanced stages of each and every tournament. It becomes
increasingly difficult to keep playing for so long and the withdrawals from the likes of the Serena Williams and Venus Williams wasn’t a much of a surprise to the Russian blonde.
She stated, “This is the end of the year for us and you know it's a pretty long season of 10 months of playing tournaments back to back. There is no doubt towards the end of the season you are not as fit as you are in the beginning,
maybe don't have as much energy, because the last Grand Slam of the year (US Open) was only a couple of weeks ago. You try to give your all for that. And then also we had the addition of the Olympics this year. So it was an incredibly busy summer for everybody."
Sharapova had an emphatic run in the clay court season where she clinched the missing Roland Garros French Open title to complete her Career Slam. She also took over the top ranked slot from the reigning world number one, Victoria
Azarenka, but the poor run at the Wimbledon Championships where she was ousted in the fourth round of the tournament at the hands of the German superstar, Sabine Lisicki, forced her to handover the number one spot back to the reigning Australian Open Champion.
Talking about the tour of Asia in September, the 25-year-old Russian mentioned that the competitions is Seoul, Guangzhou, Tokyo and Beijing are played back-to-back and that puts a whole lot of pressure on the athletes that are
seeking to stay fit for the season-end finale that is scheduled to be contested at Istanbul and worth $4.9 million.
The Russian fall victim to the upset in the quarter-final of the Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo but expects to make a stunning start and play her best tennis at the China Open in Beijing. She will begin her campaign against the
Romanian star, Simona Halep.
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