By Richard Pagliaro | Wednesday, August 2, 2017
"After much backwards and forwards and consultations with my doctors and my team, unfortunately I have decided to skip Canada and Cincinnati to be on the safe side," Stan Wawrinka announced today.
Photo credit: Mark Peterson/Corleve
Stan Wawrinka overcame then world No. 1 Novak Djokovic, a pre-match panic attack and cramps to capture the 2016 US Open.
Wawrinka’s US Open title defense is now in doubt with his departure from upcoming Masters 1000 tournaments in Montreal and Cincinnati.
Watch: Djokovic Out
The fourth-round Swiss announced his withdrawal from both Montreal and Cincinnati today as he tries to recover from a knee injury in time to defend his US Open championship later this month.
“After much backwards and forwards and consultations with my doctors and my team, unfortunately I have decided to skip Canada and Cincinnati to be on the safe side, even though I've been battling hard to make these events,” Wawrinka wrote in a Facebook post. "Hugely disappointing for my fans and myself that I have to make this decision, but I need to be 100 percent confident before I resume competition till the injury that plagued me in Wimbeldon has been resolved.
My team and I are doing everything possible to make this a speedy recovery."
The 32-year-old Wawrinka’s withdrawal means he would enter the season’s final Grand Slam without a summer hard-court match as preparation.
Wawrinka’s last hard-court match was a three-set loss to Alexander Zverev in Miami last March.
Following his first-round Wimbledon loss to 49th-ranked Daniil Medvedev, Wawrinka said he’s been bothered by the knee issue since late last year.
“It's not something new, but something I had in the past,” Warinka said at Wimbledon. “End of last year and also in Australia.
“But, again, since I had that problem, was the first time I'm playing on grass. Apparently grass is not the best surface for my knee. I need to figure it out exactly what's the problem now, what I'm going to do, and come back on the tennis court when I will feeling without any pain.”
Since the 2015 Roland Garros champion lost to Rafael Nadal in the French Open final, he's played just two matches losing his Queen's Club opener to Feliciano Lopez before his first-round exit from Wimbledon.
If Wawrinka cannot recover in time to defend the US Open, which starts on August 28th it would leave the Flushing Meadows major without its defending champion and 2016 finalist Novak Djokovic, who has closed the curtain on his 2017 season to recover from an ongoing elbow injury.