Serena Williams reluctantly pulled out of this year\u2019s Australian Open on Friday, the American saying that while she was close to regaining full fitness after giving birth to her first child in September, she was not fully ready to defend her title. The 36-year-old was eight weeks pregnant last year when she triumphed for a seventh time at Melbourne Park to claim an Open-era record 23rd grand slam title and then took the rest of the year off before giving birth to a daughter.<\/p>\n
She has played just once in public since, losing to French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko in Abu Dhabi last week, but was still hopeful of making a remarkable return at the Australian Open until she admitted defeat a week ahead of the event. \u201cMy coach and team always said \u2018only go to tournaments when you are prepared to go all the way\u2019. I can compete \u2013 but I don\u2019t want to just compete, I want to do far better than that and to do so, I will need a little more time,\u201d Williams said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Williams had told Vogue magazine last August about her \u201coutrageous plan\u201d to defend her title but the short turnaround after giving birth has proven too much for even the greatest player of her generation. Williams, whose grand slam tally is just one shy of the all-time record held by Australian Margaret Court, said she was disappointed to withdraw but looked forward to returning in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter competing in Abu Dhabi I realised that although I am super close, I\u2019m not where I personally want to be,\u201d Williams added. \u201cWith that being said, and even though I am disappointed about it, I\u2019ve decided not to compete in the Australian Open this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tournament director Craig Tiley called Williams\u2019 efforts to try and be ready for a title defence at the Australian Open \u201cHerculean\u201d and said she transcended the sport. \u201cIt was never going to be good enough for her to just compete, she wants to give herself the best chance to win,\u201d Tiley said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been in constant contact with Serena and her team and know this is why she has pushed it and pushed it until the eleventh hour to make her final decision.\u201d Williams is the latest big name to withdraw from the year\u2019s opening grand slam, which will be played from Jan. 15-28, with Britain\u2019s Andy Murray (hip) and Japan\u2019s Kei Nishikori (wrist) having already said they would not compete.<\/p>\n
There is also uncertainty over whether former champions Novak Djokovic, Stan Wawrinka and Rafa Nadal, the latter of which arrived in Melbourne earlier on Friday, will be fit to take to the court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Serena Williams reluctantly pulled out of this year\u2019s Australian Open on Friday, the American saying that while she was close to regaining full fitness after giving birth to her first child in September, she was not fully ready to defend her title. The 36-year-old was eight weeks pregnant last year when she triumphed for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17327,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17328,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17326\/revisions\/17328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}