Former world No. 1 Andy Murray and Japan’s Kei Nishikori yesterday pulled out of the Australian Open as a host of top names battle to be fit for the year’s first Grand Slam.
Murray, 30, had failed to recover from a hip injury sustained last year and has not played since losing in the Wimbledon quarter-finals in July last year, while Nishikori has been on the sidelines since August last year due to a torn tendon in his right wrist.
The loss of the Scot, who might now opt for surgery on his hip, came with injury clouds hanging over a who’s who of stars before the Australian Open begins on Jan. 15
World No. 1 Rafael Nadal and six-time Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic remain huge doubts, having yet to play a competitive match this year.
Nadal, the reigning French Open and US Open champion, pulled out of Brisbane over the weekend with a knee injury, but said he still intends to play at Melbourne Park.
Former world No. 1 Novak Djokovic has not played since a right elbow issue forced him to quit Wimbledon in the quarter-finals.
World No. 8 Jack Sock joined the growing injury list when he injured his hip on Tuesday at the Hopman Cup in Perth, Australia.
Switzerland’s Stan Wawrinka and Canada’s Milos Raonic are also returning from injuries, but intend to play in Melbourne.
Asian No. 1 Nishikori said his rehabilitation had been “going well, but I am just not ready 100 percent to come back yet in best-of-five-set matches.”
On the women’s side of the draw there are question marks over the fitness of defending champion Serena Williams, who has not played competitively since giving birth four months ago.
Earlier in the week, Wimbledon champion and world No. 2 Garbine Muguruza was forced to retire at Brisbane with severe leg cramps, even though the Spanish two-time Grand Slam winner yesterday accepted a wild card to play in Sydney.
US Open champion Sloane Stephens pulled out of Brisbane before the tournament to rest a troublesome knee, but is entered for Sydney.
Upcoming French star Caroline Garcia, who enjoyed a breakthrough season last year, rising to No. 8 in the world, retired in tears with back pain from the same event on Sunday.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier