Injured Sabalenka not 100% ready for Wimbledon but refuses to give up hope

Wimbledon third seed Aryna Sabalenka said she was not fully ready for Monday’s first-round clash with Emina Bektas at the championships as the two-time Australian Open champion continues to struggle with a rare shoulder injury.

Sabalenka, who also suffered a lower back injury earlier this year and was down with a sickness during the French Open earlier this month, said her health was a reason she had chosen not to play in next month’s Paris Olympics.

“No, I’m not 100% fit now. We are doing everything we can with my team to make sure I’ll be able to play my first match here, but, no, I’m not 100% ready,” Sabalenka told reporters on Saturday.

“It (the muscle) is teres major… it’s really a specific injury, and it’s really a rare one. Probably I’m just the second or the third tennis player who injured that muscle,” she said.

“The most annoying thing is that I can do anything. I can practise, I can hit my groundstrokes. I’m struggling with serving. That’s really annoying. You don’t feel like you’re injured… but if you tell me to serve, I’m going to go through pain.

“Recently I’ve been struggling with a lot of things health-wise, injury-wise. My body is kind of, like, showing that I have to take care of myself,” she said.

“Yeah, I just decided to sacrifice Olympics for my career, for my health actually.”

But the Belarusian, who reached the semi-finals last year, said she had not given up on Wimbledon yet.

“We did an MRI, we did everything. We did a lot of rehab, a lot of treatments and everything,” she said.

“But I still have my hopes. As someone who’s been fighting through a lot of different pains in the past months, I still have my hopes.”