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PARIS – Women’s top seed Ashleigh Barty was knocked out of the French Open after her left thigh injury worsened during her second-round match with Magda Linnet on Thursday.
“It’s heartbreaking,” said Barty, who won the French Open in 2019 and did not defend her title last year after choosing to stay at home in Australia rather than travel during the coronavirus pandemic.
Barty lost the opening set 6-1 to Linnet, an unranked 29-year-old from Poland. Barty then left the court for medical treatment as Lynette remained in her chair, reading the tactical notes she made to the court.
Barty returned for the second set, but walked toward her chair with a score of 2-2, put down her racket and then approached the net to shake hands with Lynette, ending the match.
Barty, a 25-year-old Australian, received treatment for her hip during a tough first-round victory over Bernarda Pera on Tuesday.
“It’s going to be a little tough this week,” Barty said after that match.
It turns out she was right, as she clarified on Thursday that she injured her thigh while serving during a practice session before the tournament started.
“A completely new injury,” she said. “Something I haven’t experienced before, even while chatting with my doctor, it’s something you haven’t seen regularly either. So we’ve been consulting with people from all over the world to try and give us insight into the best ways to manage it. I’m sure we have a plan. We’ve just run out of time here. “.
Barty withdrew from her first-round doubles match on Wednesday in an effort to control the injury.
“I just tried to give myself a chance,” she said. “Obviously we had our limitations and basically tried to stay as fresh as possible and not aggravate it in any way. But in an inevitable match at times. It got worse today, and I’m at a point where it wasn’t safe.”
“No matter how difficult it was, it had to be done,” Barty added of retirement.
With the French Open just starting, the top two seeded women were eliminated from the tournament. Second seed Naomi Osaka, who could have long challenged Barty for the top spot in Paris, withdrew after her first-round victory due to a row over media obligations with tournament organizers that dominated early coverage of the event.
World number three and former French Open champion Simona Halep withdrew before the tournament began with a muscle tear in her left calf.
Aryna Sablinka, seeded No. 3, is now the top seed remaining in the women’s singles draw, but Sabalenka, a strong player from Belarus, has yet to qualify for the fourth round of the Grand Slam tournament. No. 4 seed Sofia Kenin, who reached the final at the French Open last year when it was postponed and played in October, has struggled this year while weathering the difficult decision to stop coaching her father Alex.
Kenin arrived in Paris without a coach but showed signs of recovery and defeated American Haile Baptiste, 7-5, 6-3, Thursday. Kenin should face a tougher test in the third round, however, when she plays fellow American, Jessica Pegula, who has been going through the breakout season and is ranked 28th at Roland Garros.
Despite the attrition and instability at the top, this tournament may not be as wide open as it seems. Defending champion Iga Sweetek is still in the draw and hasn’t dropped a set in two rounds, just as she hasn’t dropped a set in any of her seven matches in her 2020 title career. Last month, she won the Italian Open on clay, defeating former top seed Carolina Pliskova 6-0, 6-0, in the final.
Barty was, to an extent, defending a title in Paris, too. The tour was halted for five months in 2020 due to the pandemic, and when it resumed last year in August, it chose to skip the two major leagues rescheduled for this year, the US Open and the French Open.
It has been ranked number one since September 2019 in part due to temporary changes made to the ranking system to protect players during the pandemic. But she has often played like No. 1 since returning to action in 2021, winning the Miami Open on hard ground and the Stuttgart Open, reaching the Madrid Open final, where she lost to Sabalenka.
She had a busy schedule, probably too difficult after she was laid off. Injuries interrupted her last two championships. At the Italian Open, she retired in the second set of a quarter-final against Coco Gauff with an injury to her right arm that she said has occasionally erupted since her teens. She said her arm didn’t bother her in Paris, but that didn’t spare her more pain.
“It’s disappointing to end up like this,” she said. “She’s had my fair share of tears this week.”
Barty now has less than a month to recover before Wimbledon, which begins on June 28, when the turf surface should be suitable for her varied match. Currently, her only Grand Slam singles title is the 2019 French Open.
“Everything happens for a reason,” Barty said in her press conference after her defeat. “There will be a silver lining to this eventually. Once I find out what this is, it will make me feel a little better. But it will be there, I’m sure.”
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