Simona Halep is “reluctant” to play US Open, says Darren Cahill

After Simona Halep stated that she still hasn’t decided on whether she will participate in the 2020 edition of the US Open, her coach, Australian Darren Cahill, declared that Simona is most likely going to refuse to take the trip to Flushing Meadows.

Cahill remarked that female players are more precocious regarding playing a Grand Slam under the current circumstances. And the stats favor Simona Halep’s coach affirmation.

“I think you've got to keep some perspective on it (the US Open) as well because there are more women pulling out of the US Open than men. I think 17 (WTA players) of the top 100 pulled out so far. On the men’s side, only 9 of the top 100 pulled out,” Cahill said during an intervention at Wide World of Sports’ Sports Sunday.

Regarding Simona Halep, Cahill couldn’t say whether the en-titre Wimbledon champion will participate at the US Open or not, but he feels that she is likely to not do it.

“We don't know what Simona Halep is going to do. She's playing in the final in Prague overnight. My gut feeling is she's a bit reluctant to come across to New York.”

Simona Halep is “very careful” with her health

Cahill motivated his gut feeling with facts about Simona’s past behavior as well, so here we have another reason why we are prone to miss Halep at the US Open.

“Four years ago Simona actually missed the Olympics because she was pretty worried about the Zika virus and picking that up in Brazil. So, she's very careful with this sort of stuff,” said Darren Cahill.

“I did ask her before Prague started and the gut feeling was that she wasn't going to play but she wanted to play this tournament (Prague). It was the first one coming back from the COVID restrictions, she wanted to see how she felt. It was a short flight across from Romania to Prague, but this is a big difference going to New York,” Cahill continued.

How did Simona Halep train during the lockdown

The Australian coach that helped Simona Halep achieve the first Grand Slam of her career also described how Halep has managed to stay in shape during the isolation period caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“She stayed home for about 4 to 6 weeks, she got out, she started doing some training, we put a PlaySight camera on the back of her courts, so I can actually log in and watch all the practice sessions for the last 2 to 3 months. I got a good feel as to how she's playing but you never quite know until she gets on the court in place and I've been able to watch her full matches across in Prague, so doing a lot of coaching via video and certainly speaking about on the telephone. So, not much has changed.”

from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/2YpFLRB