Karolina Muchova left ‘frustrated’ after withdrawing from Australian Open
Karolina Muchova has been forced to withdraw from the Australian Open for the second time in three years, with a recurring wrist injury halting her comeback.
Muchova had the best season of her career in 2023, reaching a first Grand Slam final at Roland Garros, the Cincinnati Masters final and the US Open semi-final.
This enabled Muchova to reach a career-high ranking of world No.8 and qualify for the WTA Finals for the first time, but the Czech had to withdraw from the year-end tournament due to the aforementioned injury.
The 27-year-old had already pulled out of the WTA 500 tournament in Adelaide and has now confirmed that she will be missing the first major of the year in a post on Instagram.
“This isn’t my favorite thing to share especially at the start of a new season, but unfortunately the pain in a wrist came back in the middle of my tennis preparation,” revealed Muchova. “I therefore have to postpone the start of the season and fully heal my wrist first.”
She continued, “It’s frustrating but I have to keep positive, recover and get ready for the rest of the year. See you in 2025 @australianopen.”
Muchova reached the semi-finals of the Australian Open back in 2021, but missed the Melbourne major the following year due to injury, before returning to be knocked out in the second round by 2022 finalist Danielle Collins earlier this year.
Her withdrawal means that Yafan Wang enters the Australian Open main draw, leaving Emma Raducanu only two spots away from directly entering the tournament.
Inside the baseline…
Karolina Muchova has had a lot of bad luck when it comes to injuries and it finally felt like she was turning a corner after an impressive season in 2023. With the Czech not having too many points to defend until February/March time, it takes a bit of the pressure off having to return and will hopefully give Muchova the time to recover in similar form to what got her inside the WTA top 10.
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