Top seed Ashleigh Barty retired injured halfway via the second set of her French Open second-round match in opposition to Poland’s Magda Linette on Thursday. The Australian, who gained the title on her final go to to Roland Garros in 2019, left the courtroom for medical therapy after dropping the primary set 6-1.
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She had struggled with a hip drawback throughout her first-round win and known as it quits at 2-2 within the second set on Court Philippe Chatrier.
“It’s going to be just a little bit robust this week. I feel over the weekend we had a little bit of a flare-up via my left hip,” she said after beating Bernarda Pera in three sets on Tuesday.
Barty also retired injured from the Italian Open during her quarter-final against Coco Gauff last month.
It is Barty’s earliest exit from a Grand Slam tournament since a second-round loss at Roland Garros in 2018.
The 25-year-old’s withdrawal leaves the tournament already without the world’s top three-ranked women’s players.
World number two Naomi Osaka stunned the sport by pulling out following a media boycott, saying she has suffered “bouts of depression” for 3 years.
Third-ranked Simona Halep, the 2018 French Open winner, withdrew earlier than the occasion with harm.
That leaves world quantity 4 Aryna Sabalenka as the highest remaining participant within the draw, regardless of the Belarusian by no means having reached a Grand Slam quarter-final.
Unseeded Linette will face Tunisian twenty fifth seed Ons Jabeur within the final 32.
The world’s high three won’t be the one notable absences from the third spherical, with injury-plagued former US Open champion Bianca Andreescu having misplaced on the first hurdle.
The draw has opened up for the likes of reigning champion Iga Swiatek and history-chasing Serena Williams.
The 39-year-old Williams, nonetheless wanting to equal Margaret Court’s all-time document of 24 Slam titles, is the second-highest seeded participant left in her half of the draw behind Sabalenka.
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