By Richard Pagliaro | @Tennis_Now | Saturday, June 29, 2024
Photo credit: Rob Newell/CameraSport
High-stepping on Wimbledon's grass alongside Ons Jabeur in practice, Aryna Sabalenka hopes to dance around injury doubt at The Championships.
A sore serving shoulder leaves Sabalenka uncertain, but still hopeful of playing Wimbledon.
Two-time Australian Open champion Sabalenka, if healthy, is among the top contenders to raise the Rosewater Dish.
Meeting the media at Wimbledon today, Sabalenka said she's not completely fit.
"No, I'm not 100% fit now," Sabalenka said. "We're doing everything we can with my team to make sure I'll be able to play my first match here.
"But, no, I'm not 100% ready."
The good news for Sabalenka is she's able to practice groundstrokes pain-free and she's already withdrawn from next month's Olympic Games in Paris so if she can play through the pain on serve she's still in with a shot to do damage.
The bad news is shoulder pain stings while serving, the serve is the most important shot, particularly at Wimbledon, and if you can't hold, you can't win.
The core question: Can a compromised Sabalenka, who opens against 106th-ranked American Emina Bektas on No. 1 Court on Monday, compete at a high enough level to string seven straight wins together?
"It's teres major. I call it just shoulder injury," Sabalenka said. "It's really a specific injury, and it's really a rare one. Probably I'm just the second or the third tennis player who injured that muscle.
"Yeah, that's a very frustrating one. The most annoying thing is that I can do anything. I can practice, I can hit my groundstrokes. I'm struggling with serving. That's really annoying. You don't feel like you're injured. If you give me some weights, I'm going to go lift some weights. But if you tell me to serve, I'm going to go through pain. We did an MRI, we did everything. We did a lot of rehab, a lot of treatments and everything.
"But 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."
Those hopes may well be bolstered by the fact world No. 1 Iga Swiatek faces a tough draw and may be prioritizing the Olympics on Roland Garros' red clay, the fact that seven different women have won the last seven Wimbledon titles and that Sabalenka has reached the semifinals in her last two Wimbledon appearances.
"There is no expectations," said Sabalenka. "I know what I'm capable of. I know if I'm not going to be there, if I'm not going to be fighting for it, I'm not going to achieve what I can.
"My main expectation is just to go there and fight for every point."