Maria Sharapova pulls out of China Open; joined by Serena and Venus Williams – Tennis News
Current world number two Russian diva Maria Sharapova announced her withdrawal from the China Open on Saturday. Suffering from an ankle injury, the former world number has decided to rest her ankle as she pulls out from the Association
of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and Women Tennis Association (WTA) combined event held in Beijing next week.
Sharapova suffered an ankle injury during her quarterfinal match against Petra Kvitova at the 2011 Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo, Japan last week. Standing at 4-3 in the first set, Sharapova twisted her ankle as she was about
to serve and after a brief medical examination decided to retire from the match giving the Czech an easy pass into the semi-final.
Although the injury is not as threatening as her shoulder injury a few years back, Sharapova has expressed her wishes to rest her ankle in order to be in full form for the year end championship at Istanbul at the end of the month.
Talking to her official website, (http://www.mariasharapova.com), the Russian said, "The good news is the MRI scan showed no big damage to my ankle. I will do my best to recover in time for
Istanbul,"
If Sharapova pulling out from the event wasn’t a setback enough to the China Open, the WTA draw suffered another blow as former world number one and older of the Williams sisters, Venus Williams also pulled out of the event.
Diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that causes fatigue, Venus hasn’t played on tour since the 2011 US Open when she retired before her second round match against German Sabine Lisicki. Although Venus’ absence from the event
was expected, it came as much surprise to fans when her younger sister, Serena Williams also decided to skip the event.
Expected to play in the China Open next week, Serena unexpectedly dropped out of the event when she failed to show up for the draw on Friday, 30th September.
Tournament directors have yet to give a statement on Serena’s unexpected absences. The “drama queen” herself has also nothing to say on the matter. Very much active on Twitter.com, the American former world number one has not yet
explained as to why she is going to miss the event.
This will be the American’s second straight year missing the event. Injured after Wimbledon 2010, Serena called it a night – or rather a season – when she sidelined herself from the remaining tournaments of the year. Ms. Williams
did not return to tour till June 2011 when she failed to defend her title at Wimbledon and dropped out of the top 100. Since then Serena has managed to claw her way back into the top 20 with two title wins though she failed to hit it big when she lost in the
2011 US Open final to first time winner, Samantha Stosur. Perhaps the loss of a Grand Slam win at home has hit her hard.
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