Maria Sharapova deals with chronic shoulder injury, says Tarpischev
The Russian Tennis Federation chief Shamil Tarpischev commented on Maria Sharapova's fitness condition. In an interview to Championat, Tarpischev said: "Maria's shoulder injury is old, I would say even chronic, so the thing is unpredictable. I think she needs to play tournaments that have most points at stake in order to have a higher ranking, and not all in a row. But again, with that injury, you have to be careful because the serve is one of the basics of her game. If I were Maria, I would focus on the Grand Slam tournaments because you cannot stress your shoulder too much, and they award many more points than most of the other events. Maria has a big ambition: winning the Olympic gold. So I think it's an incentive to play since she never won the medal. Her success depends just on her health.'
In a press conference, the St. Petersburg Ladies Trophy Tournament Director Alexander Medvedev commented on Sharapova's withdrawal from the tournament. It was definitely a huge blow for the organizers, but Maria had no other choice. "The story of the last three years showed that we always had a packed stadium in the finals", said Medvedev. We still have a lot of stars: Kvitova, Kasatkina, Goerges. These are very strong players. Maria is clearly a star. Sharapova kept staying in the tournament getting in touch with reporters and fans. It always happens in life that joyful events are combined by the sad ones. In this case, Maria has a chronic injury which also forced her to withdraw from the previous tournament in China. And during the first match, her shoulder started bothering her. It hurts her a lot. After all, we do not play hockey. Tennis is a single sport and no one can play for you. The risk to get your injury worse is so big that it is impossible to play. She suffered a serious injury, I can say that the recovery is a difficult process. Especially if the injury did not fully heal. So Maria could not play. We should just thank her for coming here and winning a difficult match. If she wanted to quickly retire and not play, she would have retired yesterday. But Maria took the decision this morning. We hoped the night would have made things better, but it did not happen."
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from Tennis World USA http://bit.ly/2S8hu0U
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