Davenport withdraws from ‘08 Wimbledon; doesn’t plan to be back
Former champion Lindsay Davenport was forced to withdraw from this year’s Championships due to a knee injury, shortly before her scheduled second round match with Argentina’s Gisela Dulko.The 1999 winner was making a comeback at Wimbledon, having missed the last two years since her loss to Venus Williams in 2005’s epic final. In 2006, she had a back injury and last year she was pregnant with her first child.
Davenport indicated that this marked the end of her Wimbledon career. When she was asked in a press conference if she would be back next year she replied: “I guess not.”
The 32-year-old needed a medical timeout during her first round victory over Renata Voracova and she told the media that she underwent an MRI scan after the match, and it showed some inflammation and fluid behind the knee.
The former world number one said she was relieved not to require surgery but she would be away from tennis for up to four weeks. Davenport, who had entered the tournament with a knee complaint, said she had rested completely yesterday before testing her fitness in practice this morning - but she assessed that her knee was only “20 to 30%” right.
“I toyed with the idea of going out because it didn’t hurt at all to serve,” she said. “But at a certain point, it’s the second round, and I feel like I want to be 100% and have a chance to win, not just hope to get by one more round or one more set. My knee just wasn’t going to allow that to happen today.
“If I learned anything over my career, this is the way it goes sometimes. I was almost in tears the other night. I was so relieved it was nothing major so that actually put me in probably a better mood than I should be.”
Davenport said she had two key ambitions which had inspired her return to tennis: to play at this year’s US Open and to compete at the Beijing Olympics in August, where she will try to add to the gold medal she won in Atlanta in 1996.
And she predicted she would be fit for both those challenges, saying: “The doctors are very confident that the inflammation will go away and the pain will subside with that.”
wimbledon.org
