Yesterday was a day of withdrawals on the WTA Tour as as Cibulkova, Svitolina, Sloane, Collins and Maria Sharapova all withdrew from Stuttgart.
Yesterday morning I did hear that Maria would not compete in Stuttgart and questioned if she would if she felt she could not compete at the highest level and has decided not to play there. The story has broken within the last 10 hours, there is no official comment on this yet but she is also out of Madrid.
Elina Svitolina is also out of Stuttgart which does come as a shock with videos of practicing on the clay with her coach on Instagram but with an on-going knee problem the Ukrainian will likely not play until Madrid.
Dominika Cibulkova and Danielle Collins have also both withdrawn from the tournament with injuries as well.
Sloane Stephens who is in San Antonio at the moment in the USA for Fed Cup has also withdrawn due to her commitments there with the tie being played on hard courts.
With the five withdrawals it does mean the next direct entrant if there is another withdrawal is Azarenka who already has a wildcard.
However this is where it get’s interesting. Vika right now is in Brisbane for Fed Cup so once she is done on Sunday she has a 26+ hour flight from Brisbane to Stuttgart so I feel like we are waiting for the withdrawal but we will have to wait and see…
Leave a Reply