If you are a fan of Dinara Safina, your worst fears are true: Safina's back injury is bothering her again, and she has decided to stop playing for the season. This is really bad news for the former world number 1, who said: "It has been the worst year of my career, mainly because of my injury that has kept me away from several tournaments and kept me from playing my game of tennis."
Safina's career skyrocketed in 2008 and 2009, but toward the end of 2009, she began to suffer with the back injury that took her out of the WTA Championships and would cause her to retire from both Brisbane and the 2010 Australian Open. The injury also took her off of the tour for three months in the early part of the season. She returned for the clay season, but had to withdraw from Wimbledon because of her back, which she had been assured was totally healed.
Here's hoping that someone in the rehab world has a solution for the talented and ceaselessly entertaining Russian who is better known on this blog as Thrill Ride. The tour just isn't the same without her.
I worry about Safina. That injury really is never going to heal completely-- I had much the same injury, and did much the same thing (trained/competed on it when I could for a year), and then in the end I had to take a year off anyway. It really does demand a full year to heal as much as it can/switch your training regimen to focus on supporting that specific part of your body. I just don't see her ever taking that kind of time, sadly. Hopefully it'll work out for her, but I won't be surprised if she's really forced into retirement relatively early.
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