Serena Williams has withdrawn from the French Open due to an Achilles injury ahead of her second round match on Wednesday, Roland Garros confirmed.
The 39-year-old American’s bid for a 24th Grand Slam title suffered another blow. Williams, a three-time winner at Roland Garros, had arrived in Paris carrying an Achilles injury that prompted her to skip the Rome tune-up event.
“The Achilles didn’t have enough time to heal after the US Open,” said Williams. “I was struggling to walk and that is a tell-tale sign that I should try to recover.”
The injury likely means she will miss the rest of 2020 leaving the Australian Open in 2021 as her next chance to equal Margaret Court’s all-time majors record.
“I need four to six weeks of sitting and doing nothing,” she said. “It’s more than likely that I won’t play another tournament this year.”
Her decision to pull out handed Bulgaria’s Tsvetana Pironkova a walkover and left Williams searching for a first major since the last of her 23 titles at Melbourne in 2017.
Williams, now into her fourth decade on tour, has not won a Slam since capturing a seventh Australian Open in 2017 when she was pregnant.
Since then, it’s been a series of near-misses for a player who also pulled out of Paris in 2018 on the even of an eagerly-awaited last-16 clash with Maria Sharapova.
After returning from giving birth, she reached the finals of Wimbledon and the US Open in 2018 and 2019. In 2020, she fell in three sets in the fourth round in Australia to China’s Wang Qiang while the cancellation of Wimbledon was another roadblock.
However, it would take a lot to convince Williams to call time on her groundbreaking career having overcome more serious hurdles than an Achilles injury in her time.
In 2011, a pulmonary embolism caused a clot in her lung.
“I was on my death bed at one point – quite literally. I’ve had a serious illness but at first I didn’t appreciate that,” she said at the time.
Seven years later, she revealed that she had another close encounter with her own mortality when giving birth.
“I almost died after giving birth to my daughter, Olympia,” she said after undergoing an emergency caesarean section.
On Wednesday, Williams gave no indication that she was on the brink of retirement from a career which has brought her 73 career titles, $93.5 million in prize money and a 23-Slam haul which started in 1999 with the first of her six US Open crowns.
“I always give 100 percent, everyone knows that. Maybe even more than 100 if that’s possible. I take solace in that,” she told reporters.
“I think the Achilles is a real injury that you don’t want to play with because that is not good if it gets worse.”
With AFP Inputs
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