The ankle is one frailty we share with our athletic heroes. No matter how spectacular the physique above, that accursed little joint is at all times up for sabotage. (Just ask that man who needed to get the “crab meat” scooped out with a view to proceed revolutionizing his sport.) It’s additionally a ache intimately acquainted to us unspectacular people. Anyone who’s ever, say, missed a step on a staircase is aware of it too effectively—a ache that’s complete, that pulverizes all different ideas, that looks as if an unattainable punishment for a foolish misstep. It seemed to be the ankle that obtained Bianca Andreescu on Monday night time. She’d been constructing momentum on the Miami Open, taking out Emma Raducanu, then No. 7 seed Maria Sakkari, then a rebounding Sofia Kenin. It was attainable to see, in silhouette, the participant who made the ultimate of this match in 2021, if not but the participant who received the U.S. Open in 2019. With one false step all of it went darkish once more. Down a set to No. 18 seed Ekaterina Alexandrova, however up a break within the second, Andreescu moved to a ball and fell to the court docket clutching her decrease left leg.
“I’ve never felt this kind of pain before,” she screamed. Also audible was “not again.” By 22, Andreescu has seen sufficient setbacks. As a junior she missed lengthy stretches of competitors with a stress fracture in her foot and again points. She wound down 2019 with a knee damage, a untimely ending to her 46-7 breakout season. That sidelined her for the primary few months of 2020, after which the pandemic froze the tour; she didn’t compete for the remainder of the season. In 2021, she put collectively some dramatic wins in Miami, solely to retire from the ultimate with an ankle sprain. The following month she examined constructive for COVID-19, which pressured her to withdraw from the Madrid Open, and continued testing constructive for a month, all however killing her clay season. By October, when it was time to defend her 2019 Indian Wells title, she was spent. “I’m just sitting there, in this beautiful house, looking around at this beautiful place, and I keep thinking about how I should be so happy and so grateful to be there, how I’d won the tournament before. And I just hated everything,” she later said of that second. That prompted a six-month hiatus from tennis. When she returned in 2022, outcomes have been blended, and 2023 appeared to supply extra of the identical. As just lately as final month, she retired from a Thailand Open semifinal with a shoulder damage.
Over this previous week, in a window of fine well being, Andreescu rediscovered the intuitive and spontaneous tennis that made her a high prospect. “I think it’s just another step in gaining most of my confidence back,” she said on Friday after a second-round win over Sakkari, considered one of simply three top-10 wins she’d managed within the final three years. “I’m trying to be as fearless as I can be.” After defeating Kenin within the third spherical, she mirrored on a brand new mentality. “Last time I played here in 2021, I did not enjoy myself,” she stated in her on-court interview. “I did not feel that I deserved to be in that final. But this year, I feel like a totally different person, and I definitely feel I deserve to be here right now.”
On Monday night time, after spending a number of minutes on the court docket flanked by medical employees, Andreescu was helped to her ft. She embraced her opponent, sat in a wheelchair, and left in tears. She has not but supplied an replace on the severity of her damage.
