Victoria Azarenka
(March 14, 2013) BNP Paribas Open top seed Belarusian Victoria Azarenka and seventh seed Australian Samantha Stosur withdrew from their quarterfinal matches on Thursday due to ankle and calf injuries respectively.
“On my warmup today. I tested it out as much as possible,” Azarenka said.” I tried absolutely everything I could to do, but I have been advised by the doctor, by my own team, that it’s just a very, very high risk already.
“Well, in medical term, it’s a right‑foot injury, and there is a big inflammation in both ‑‑ and tendinitis,” Azarenka continued. Around tendinitis, there is a big inflammation which keeps bothering one part or another, I mean, it cannot get better with me playing on it, especially playing last three matches on it.
“It’s just worse. I tried not to practice yesterday, and to see if it will settle down at least a little bit. I felt yesterday was better, not walking in my tennis shoes.
“But today, once I started doing the exercise, that was it.”
“I hurt my right calf muscle in the last game of my match against Mona Barthel when I was serving for the match, so I don’t know if you can get any more unlucky than that, “ Stosur said. “I think we only played another four points in that match. I felt something go in my calf and it was hurting a fair bit. Yesterday I took the day off practice and only did treatment, probably iced it about 10 times. This morning I thought I would give it a shot, and tried to go out and warm up, and after about five minutes I knew that there was no chance I could play unfortunately.”
“It’s really disappointing. I had a bit of a rough start to the year and I feel like now my tennis has really picked up, and I’ve been playing really quite well these last few days. I love the conditions here at the BNP Paribas Open and I love playing in front of this crowd, so to have to pull out without even being able to get on court is probably as bad as it gets. I think this is only the second time I’ve ever pulled out of a match in my career, and unfortunately there isn’t anything I can do about it.”
With the withdrawals Angelique Kerber and Caroline Wozniacki advance and will face each other in the semifinals of the Indian Wells tennis event.
Should Maria Sharapova win her semifinal against Maria Kirilenko she’ll move up to No. 2 ranking pushing Azarenka down to No. 3..