Kim has announced that after this years US Open she will once again hang up her racquet.
The first retirement was from 2007 – 2009, though it was not long before Kim was back in the winners circle. The comeback was capped with her 2nd US Open title in 2009 when she defeated Caroline Wozniacki in straight sets. Two more Slams have followed in the form of the 2010 US Open and finally, the Australian Open in 2011.
“As it stands I will end my career at the US Open. That is where I enjoyed my greatest triumphs and it is a very special place for me.”
Kim has made no secret of her plan to retire and she is most looking forward to playing for Belgium at Wimbledon for the tennis tournament at the London Olympics. Kim did not play in 2008 as she was retired and Athens was marred by a sponsorship row that meant she could not compete.
“The Olympic fever is started to build”
Good luck Kim in whatever you do, it has be great to watch you play over the years.
Ivan Ljubicic, the big serving Croatian, has announced that he will be retiring after the Monte Carlo Masters in Monaco. Ivan has won 10 title throughout his 14-years-career, most notably capturing the BNP Paribas Open crown in 2010.
Ivan is 32 years old and has two daughters and resides in Monte Carlo, so his local tournament will be his last.
Ivan.. after you have retired and had some time to off, drop us an email and you should come and write for us!
Roger Federer has announced that he doesn’t plan on retiring until at least 2016.
“I won’t be retiring after the London Olympics. I hope to be playing many more years to come. Haven’t set a date or thought about it in any way. In fact, I’m hoping now to play Rio” — host city for the 2016 Olympics in Brazil.
Patty Schnyder retired from tennis after the French Open 2011, and her amazing 17 year career has received a great tribute for her at the WTA Tour Championships in Istanbul.
As I was going through the US Open Men’s Singles draw earlier today, I happened to notice that there were what appeared to be a high amount of in match retirements. What I found was that through the completion of the first round and half of the second round there have been a total of six in match retirements. This equals the highest single year total from at least 2005 and it is only the second round. That means that there have been more in match retirements in the first two rounds of the 2011 US Open than any of the past six tournaments at Flushing Meadows.
Three of these retirements have interestingly come from qualifiers (Niland, Sorensen, Dancevic) including Novak Djokovic’s first round opponent, Connor Niland, who retired after just over 40 minutes due to food poisoning. It is extremely unfortunate to have to grind out three tough qualifying matches on the outside courts the week before the Open and then succumb to injury in the first round of the Main Draw.
I think this high occurrence of retirements is more easily explained by simply citing that a coincidence has occurred as there no evidence that these retirements are somehow connected due to some uncontrollable variable such as heat or humidity.
With over a week left before the final major of the year reaches this conclusion, don’t expect many more r’s in the draw as every match is do or die in the final grand slam of the year.
Unfortunately Dinara Safina has abandond tennis forever. Dinara has been suffering from a long term back injury and unfortunately she has been unable to overcome it.
Sadly Dinara was planning on playing the French Open and even tweeted about it only a few days ago.
Dinara you are going to be sorely missed!
She said: “I don’t know how long my time out is going to last. I don’t want to torture myself and my body anymore.
“I’m just tired of constant questions from my coach in training, ‘How is your back? Can you do this exercise?’.”
Safina added: ” I’m just tired of fighting with myself. At the moment I can’t do anything tennis-wise. When I can do certain moves without feeling lots of pain, then I would consider resuming my training.
“Right now I don’t care when I might return – this summer during the American hardcourt series, towards the end of the season or next year.
Its been rumoured that the 2012 Olympics will be Kim Clijsters final major tournament. On Wednesday Kim hinted that she may retire for the second time after the 2012 London Olympics.
“That will probably be the last big event that I will be a part of,” said the three-time U.S. Open champion, who has gone back and forth on the subject of her retirement date a number of times.
The 27-year-old already retired once. In May 2007, Clijsters decided to start a family when she was 23-years old. She came out of retirement one year and three months later.
“The desire is back. I have missed the competition in the last two years. I am training for one goal, to face all these talented girls,” Clijsters said.
Mario Ancic has just retired from professional tennis. Mario is only 26 and one of the most promising players I have ever seen play, but persistent illness and injury has been too much.
I remember watching Mario play in juniors and he was always a rising star. Mario has played some amazing matches and had some great results. Mario will retire from tennis to focus on a career in law.
“I can’t stand it anymore, I have finished my career,” Ancic said on Monday. “I’m forced to quit because nature has decided it’s time. My back can’t withstand the effort of professional tennis.”
Fellow Croat Ivan Ljubicic was devastated for his compatriot.
“It’s terrible. I mean that’s the worst way for a sportsman to finish the career,” said the 31-year-old after being forced to quit his first round-match in Dubai with injury.
“Fortunately he has a law degree. He’s already practising that. His life, it will go on,” added Ljubicic, who partnered Ancic to Olympic bronze in 2004.
“Together we achieved so much at such early stages of our careers. It was just incredibly unfortunate to kind of finish it that way.
“I saw him in Zagreb just a couple of weeks ago. We are in touch all the time. I didn’t bother asking him too much how he was, because I knew the answer. It was not good, not good for the last three years.”
Ancic used that time to complete his law degree at the University of Split – in the city of his birth – which he completed in 2008, with a thesis on the legal foundation and organisation of the ATP Tour.
Camille Pin has announced her retirement from professional tennis after a 12 year career.
Pin’s last match was a first round doubles loss at the French Open. Pin, who never won a title on the WTA Tour, said “it’s a very special day for me, because it’s such a tough decision.”
Pin had mainly focused on doubles lately, having reached a career-high singles ranking of 61st in 2007. She was not entered in the singles draw at Roland Garros.
Tennis is a very difficult sport to make a solid living from, especially if you are hovering around 100 or 200 in the world in doubles.
Nicole Vaidisova was one of the most talked about players on the WTA tour, not just for her good looks but also her results. She had reached the Semifinals of the French Open at the age of 16, then in 2007 won her way to the Semifinals of the Australian Open, and the Quarterfinals of the French Open and Wimbledon, while bowing out of the U.S. Open in the 3rd round. She racked up 6 Sonny Ericsson WTA Tour singles titles, plus two ITF Women’s Circuit singles titles, earning over $2.7 million.
It looked like a promising career as she ended 2007 ranked 12th in the world. But she went into a slump and her ranking began to plummet. In 2008 she ended the year ranked 41, and 2009 she dropped to 186. In 2009 she lost in the 1st round of the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon. She didn’t even play in the U.S. Open. What happened?
It seems Vaidisova is now content just to watch fiancé Radek Stepanek play tennis, instead of playing tennis herself. Instead of preparing for the upcoming Sony Ericsson Open, Vaidisova was wrapped in a blanket sitting in the stands at the Sunrise Tennis Club cheering on her fiancé, Radek Stepanek, the top seed at the BMW Tennis Championship Challenger last Wednesday evening.
“I’m just a tennis fan,” said Vaidisova, 20, who refused to confirm reports that she has turned down a wild card into the Sony, is retired and will marry her 17th-ranked compatriot. “You can talk to Radek.” However, the Czech Daily Report has quoted her stepfather and former coach Alex Kodat as saying she is, “fed up with tennis.” “Her agent told me last week. She’s fed up with tennis and that’s understandable. She started very young,” Kodat said.
Vaidisova, who is now ranked 216, is no longer listed among the active players on the Sony Ericsson WTA web site. Meanwhile Stepanek admitted that the two will be married, but left the retirement issue to his fiancée. “We are getting married,” said Stepanek, who finished 2009 a career-best 12th. “It’s great to have her by my side supporting me. It means so much to me. “This [retirement] question is for her. If she wants to say something then she would say it.”
So it would appear Vaidisova has turned her love of tennis into love for a tennis player. Her heart, which had been given to tennis for a short time, has now been given away to Stepanek. Instead of serving up love games on the court, she will be serving up love off the court. If that’s where her heart is, I’m all for her. Go Vaidisova!
Last week we were the first to write about Fabrice Santoro and how this would be his last French Open at Roland Garros. Fabrice Santoro, nicknamed the Magician for his habit of mystifying bigger and stronger opponents, is proudly preparing to open his bag of tricks for his 20th and final French Open show. The Frenchman, who will retire at the end of the year, will extend his record of appearances at grand-slam events to 67 in the May 24-June 7 claycourt tournament.
The 36-year-old Frenchman played only eight minutes Wednesday before completing a first-round loss to Christophe Rochus of Belgium 6-3, 6-1, 3-6, 6-4. The match had been suspended Tuesday because of darkness.
“When I started my career on court No. 10 in 1989, I did not imagine at all that I would hold the microphone in my hands 20 years later in front of you,” Santoro said to the crowd at Court Suzanne Lenglen. “Those were extraordinary and fantastic years that I will never forget.”
Santoro has played in a record 67 Grand Slam tournaments, making the fourth round three times — at the French Open in 1991 and 2001 and at the Australian Open in 1999.
“Twenty years. That counts for something in a lifetime,” Santoro said. “It has been a long road, a fantastic career. I had a lot of fun and learned a lot.”
Santoro and Rochus started their match Tuesday, but it was suspended with the Belgian leading 5-3 in the fourth set. The pair came back out onto the court after top-ranked Dinara Safina’s easy win and finished the match quickly.
“I’m saying to myself that the story is over, that a page is being turned,” Santoro said. “I will no longer be on court next year. But I think that it is time to go.”
Fabrice Santoro, nicknamed the Magician for his habit of mystifying bigger and stronger opponents, is proudly preparing to open his bag of tricks for his 20th and final French Open show. The Frenchman, who will retire at the end of the year, will extend his record of appearances at grand-slam events to 67 in the May 24-June 7 claycourt tournament.
“Last Roland Garros, last year on the circuit, there is that feeling that a page is being turned and an immense satisfaction to have done 20 of them,” the 36-year-old Santoro told Reuters in an interview.
“I never dreamed I would get that far.” One of the few major players on the men’s circuit to hit both shots double-handed, Santoro has won many admirers over the years for his finesse and sense of strategy. “I keep bumping into people who tell me to carry on but in my head it’s clear, I’m stopping,” he said.
Russian former world number one Marat Safin is looking forward to life after tennis when he retires from the professional tour at the end of the year and says he does not care how people remember him. The 29-year-old twice grand slam champion, who is on a farewell sweep of the events he has graced since he turned professional in 1997, lost in the first round of the Madrid Open on Monday to Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
“They can remember me how they want,” Safin, the U.S. Open champion in 2000 and winner of the Australian Open title in 2005, told a news conference. “I don’t care. I’m not really thinking about it all day.” Safin said he had not eased back on the regime he had followed during his decade at the top of the sport even though it was his final year.
“You wake up in the morning and you get on a bus or in a car at 11 o’clock,” he said. You come back around six. You watch a couple of episodes of something on TV. You read a book. You go for dinner. You look at the internet a little bit. And then you go to sleep. It’s boring I know but it’s the routine you have to do because you can’t do anything else. That’s our job for 10 years. Some great moments, some bad moments. Sometimes we can get out and have some fun but most of the time you have to be focused on tennis. Life is waiting for me after,” he added with a smile.
Mario Ancic has just retired from professional tennis. Mario is only 26 and one of the most promising players I have ever seen play, but persistent illness and injury has been too much.
Nicole Vaidisova was one of the most talked about players on the WTA tour, not just for her good looks but also her results. She had reached the Semifinals of the French Open at the age of 16, then in 2007 won her way to the Semifinals of the Australian Open, and the Quarterfinals of the French Open and Wimbledon, while bowing out of the U.S. Open in the 3rd round. She racked up 6 Sonny Ericsson WTA Tour singles titles, plus two ITF Women’s Circuit singles titles, earning over $2.7 million.
Last week we were the first to write about Fabrice Santoro and how this would be his 
Russian former world number one Marat Safin is looking forward to life after tennis when he retires from the professional tour at the end of the year and says he does not care how people remember him. The 29-year-old twice grand slam champion, who is on a farewell sweep of the events he has graced since he turned professional in 1997, lost in the first round of the Madrid Open on Monday to Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
