Forced Break

Category: Tennis

Publish Date: 03-05-2010 02:14 PM -0500

The women’s tour can be an emotional roller coaster, particularly when Dinara Safina is playing. During her matches you can bet you’ll see her berate herself in her native Russian, lock eyes with her coach in search of answers, or dissove in tears (and sometimes all three). But lately it hasn’t been her mental game that’s been holding her back. Now it’s her physical game. This week she announced that she won’t be able to play Indian Wells, which starts next Wednesday, due to a recurring back injury. �

The world No. 2 first sustained the injury in mid-2009, and she was forced to pull out of the season-ending championships in Doha in October. Then, after spending the off-season rehabbing and recuperating, she was back to telling the chair umpire midmatch that she couldn’t go on at the Australian Open.�

What now for Safina? More rehab. And to be honest, I can’t help but think that that may be a good thing. While Safina has had a couple of great seasons on tour, her success has been a mixed bag. Yes, she reached three Grand Slam finals, but she also fell apart in all of them. Yes, she reached No. 1, but she spent press conference after press conference defending that ranking. A forced break might do her good both physically and mentally. Maybe she could even be next in line for an extended layoff, like the ones Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin took. In the April issue of TENNIS, Chris Evert makes “The Case for the Hiatus,” saying that players should be allowed to take time off without having to officially retire.

Clijsters’ main reason for calling it quits, aside from the decision to have a family, was a laundry list of injuries (wrist, back, hip) that made it hard for her to show up on court prepared. “The constant injuries and continual rehabilitation…it makes it all even more difficult to go on,” she said when she retired.

As for Henin, her decision was seen as more emotional and due to burnout. Weeks before she was to defend her French Open title, which she had won the previous three years, she lost the last match of her first career to Safina in Berlin. A week later she announced her retirement, saying, “I really fought these last few months to try for a miracle and to get back this desire and flame I had in me. But I finished thinking it through after Berlin. At the end of last week, I realized I was at the end of my road.”

It’s been almost two years since that breakout match for Safina, and now I find myself thinking Safina’s woes are similar to both the Belgians’. Her struggles are with both her body and her emotions. But then again, her career doesn’t exactly rival Clijsters' and especially Henin’s first careers. Here’s hoping her injury layoff will be enough to get her back to the top of her game and�give her a mental break so she can enjoy herself on court.�

If her attitude in the off-season says anything, she’s going to fight to get back to the tour as soon as possible: “I’m trying to recover and get fit for 2010, so I can hopefully show you all some good tennis again!” she wrote to fans on her website. “Don’t give up on me. I’ll do my best!” We’ll see if she’s ready to do her best in Miami, or if this will be a more extended break.�

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