{"id":408291,"date":"2024-07-01T13:20:37","date_gmt":"2024-07-01T13:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=408291"},"modified":"2024-07-01T15:04:51","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T15:04:51","slug":"wimbledon-favourite-heartbroken-after-difficult-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=408291","title":{"rendered":"Wimbledon favourite 'heartbroken' after difficult call"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wimbledon<\/a> favourite Aryna Sabalenka<\/a> has announced her decision on Monday (AEST) to withdraw because of an injured shoulder.<\/p>\n

The two-time Australian Open champion<\/a> was seeded third at the All England Club and was supposed to play Emina Bektas of the United States in the first round on day one at the grass-court grand slam tournament.<\/p>\n

\u201cHeartbroken to have to tell you all that I won\u2019t be able to play The Championships this year. I tried everything to get myself ready but unfortunately my shoulder is not cooperating,\u201d Sabalenka wrote on social media.<\/p>\n

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"I pushed myself to the limit in practice today to try my best, but my team explained that playing would only make things much worse. This tournament means so much to me and I promise I\u2019ll be back stronger than ever next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Sabalenka was favoured to win the women\u2019s championship at Wimbledon, according to BetMGM Sportsbook.<\/p>\n

A semi-finalist at the All England Club each of the last two times she appeared there, Sabalenka was replaced in the draw on Monday by Erika Andreeva, who lost in qualifying last week.<\/p>\n

Watch Wimbledon 2024 from July 1 live and exclusively free on Nine and<\/strong> 9Now<\/strong><\/a>. Plus centre court in 4K UHD on<\/strong> Stan Sport<\/strong><\/a>, the home of grand slam tennis.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A little more than a week ago, Sabalenka stopped playing during the first set of her quarter-final at the Berlin Ladies Open, citing pain in her shoulder.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

She said she had a muscle injury that she called \u201cvery frustrating\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most annoying thing is that I can do anything. I can practice; I can hit my groundstrokes. I\u2019m struggling with serving. That\u2019s really annoying. You don\u2019t feel like you\u2019re injured,\u201d Sabalenka said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you give me some weights, I\u2019m going to go lift some weights. But if you tell me to serve, I\u2019m going to go through pain. We did an MRI, we did everything. We did a lot of rehab, a lot of treatments and everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/TheTennisLetter\/status\/1807745350729711740?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw<\/a><\/p>\n

Sabalenka said on Saturday there was a chance she would need to pull out of Wimbledon, \u201cBut I still have my hopes. As someone who been fighting through a lot of different pains in the past months, I still have my hopes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 26-year-old from Belarus briefly reached No. 1 in the WTA rankings for the first time last season and is currently No. 3, behind Iga Swiatek and Coco Gauff.<\/p>\n

Sabalenka\u2019s game is built on power that she can generate, particularly on her serve and big forehand. It is a style of tennis that works particularly well on speedier surfaces such as the Australian Open\u2019s hard courts \u2014 where she won the championships in 2023 and this January \u2014 and Wimbledon\u2019s grass.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/Wimbledon\/status\/1807752871246471366?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw<\/a><\/p>\n

She made it to the final four at the All England Club a year ago and in 2021. Sabalenka was not allowed to enter Wimbledon in 2022, when all players from Russia and Belarus were banned from the event because of the invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Her departure from the bracket on Monday without playing a point made Sabalenka one of several players who pulled out of the tournament just as it was beginning.<\/p>\n

Ekaterina Alexandrova, who was the No. 22 seed, withdrew because of an unspecified illness, hours before she was due to face 2021 U.S. Open champion Emma Raducanu at Centre Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wimbledon favourite Aryna Sabalenka has announced her decision on Monday (AEST) to withdraw because of an injured shoulder. The two-time Australian Open champion was seeded […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":408293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408291"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=408291"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":408296,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408291\/revisions\/408296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/408293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=408291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=408291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=408291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}