WIMBLEDON, England — The Wimbledon
Championships this year will be without one
of its fixtures of the past 16: Venus Williams.
Williams announced her withdrawal on
Tuesday, making this year’s Wimbledon the
first one she will miss since 1996, before her
full-time professional career began in
earnest.
This will be the third Grand Slam event in
the last 10 that Williams has missed, having
previously pulled out of the 2011 French
Open and last year’s Australian Open.
Williams, who turned 33 on Monday, has
struggled for nearly a year with back
problems that often have prevented her from
consistently hitting with full power,
especially on her serve. The problem became
most pronounced during a semifinal in
Cincinnati last August, after she tweaked the
injury during warm-ups.
“Unfortunately, I will not be able to
participate in Wimbledon this year,”
Williams wrote in a statement written on
her official Facebook page. “I am extremely
disappointed, as I have always loved the
Championships, but I need to take time to let
my back heal. I look forward to returning to
the courts as soon as possible.”
In the statement, Williams named July 8, the
Monday after Wimbledon ends, as her
projected return date. She is scheduled to
play in World Team Tennis for the first three
days of that week with the Washington
Kastles, the team that she has helped lead to
a 32-match win streak in the annual
summer tennis league.
Williams has won five Wimbledon singles
titles, in 2000-1, 2005 and 2007-8. She also
lost three times in the final to her younger
sister Serena, who will go into this year’s
tournament as the top seed, defending
champion, and prohibitive favorite.
Either Venus or Serena has won the
Wimbledon title for 10 of the past 13 years.
They have also won the doubles title five
times.
But last year, struggling with Sjogren’s
Syndrome, a sluggish Williams lost meekly
in the first round, winning just four games
against Elena Vesnina. She would, however,
recover to win the doubles title.
Though her issues with fatigue have seemed
largely resolved in 2013, her back problems
have persisted. In March in Miami, she
withdrew from a third round match. In
April, she struggled through a Fed Cup
victory in Florida, her sore back leaving her
awkwardly arming in serves at greatly
diminished speeds.
She pulled out of the Madrid tournament on
clay in May, and her compromised serve was
again on display in first round losses in
Rome and the French Open.
“My strategy was more or less to put the ball
in, and that’s very difficult for me, too,
because that’s not who I am,” Williams said
after the first round loss to Urszula
Radwanska in Paris. “But that’s all I had.”
After the 3-hour-19-minute loss, Williams
faced questions about how much longer she
could continue.
“Obviously at some point everyone has to
retire, so that’s an asterisk,” she admitted,
after saying she would never give up. “But I
feel that I have to give myself a chance to
continue working and feeling better. And I
wouldn’t just give up just because it was
difficult. That’s not me. So my thing is that
I’m going to keep continue trying.”
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