Suffering Continues For Maria Sharapova In 2019

The five-time Grand Slam champion, Maria Sharapova announces her withdrawal from the Miami Open 2019. The Russian has been struggling with a right shoulder injury for about ten months now. After her victory against Daria Gavrilova in St. Petersburg Ladies’ Trophy earlier this month, she withdrew from her match against Daria Kasatkina in the next round due to her shoulder injury.

Before that she lost a three-set match in the Australian Open 2019 to the 15th seed Australian, Ashleigh Barty and consequently failed to reach the last eight round of the Melbourne major. Also, she announced her non-participation in the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California starting next week. Sharapova has been struggling to put her fitness in place since the time her doping-ban concluded and since then she has won just the WTA title in Tianjin. “I am incredibly committed to getting back strong,” Maria Sharapova posted. “More importantly, without the pain, I was playing with at the beginning of this year.” The 31-year-old, Maria Sharapova has been working on her muscle strength since her round-of-16 exit from the US Open 2018.

“As many of you know, I have struggled with shoulder pain since last summer,” the World Number 29, Sharapova mentioned. For ten weeks post US Open, I focused on getting my rotator cuff and scapula strong to support a surgically repaired fraying tendon and a small labrum tear. Although my shoulder got strong, it didn’t help the pain on impact. After a few different opinions in a few different countries, last week I had a small procedure done which will take a few weeks to heal.” Nevertheless, the former World Number one, Maria Sharapova is determined to increase her Grand Slam count and the Russian tennis ace is incessantly working over her fitness.