Mason, OH (Sports Network) – Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli announced her retirement Wednesday night, citing constant pain in her body.<\/p>\n
Bartoli, the No. 8 seed this week at the Western & Southern Open, a hardcourt U.S. Open tune-up, lost to Romanian Simona Halep, 3-6, 6-4, 6-1, in the second round.<\/p>\n
“That was actually the last match of my career. Sorry,” Bartoli said at the post match press conference. “It’s time for me to retire and call it a career. I feel it’s time for me to walk away actually.”<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old Frenchwoman departs the tour ranked seventh in the world and with eight career WTA singles titles. The highlight came at Wimbledon with her title victory over Sabine Lisicki.<\/p>\n
“My body just can’t do it anymore. I’ve already been through a lot of injuries since the beginning of the year,” Bartoli said. “I’ve been on the tour for so long, and I really pushed through and left it all during that Wimbledon. I really felt I gave all the energy I have left in my body. I made my dream a reality and it will stay with me forever, but now my body just can’t cope with everything. I have pain everywhere after 45 minutes or an hour of play. I’ve been doing this for so long, and body-wise I just can’t do it anymore.<\/p>\n
“My Achilles is hurting me a lot, so I can’t really walk normally after a match like that, especially on the hardcourts when the surface is so hard. And my shoulder and my hips and my lower back. The body of a tennis player, you’ve been using it for so many years, and, yeah, my body is just done.”<\/p>\n
Bartoli, a semifinalist at the 2011 French Open, first reached her career-high ranking of No. 7 on Jan. 30, 2012 and she returned to that spot following her title at Wimbledon. She compiled 490 singles wins in her career.<\/p>\n
“I congratulate Marion on her long, successful career. She is an inspirational champion and a great ambassador for women’s tennis that has dedicated her life to the sport and given so much back to the game. Fans and everyone at the WTA will miss Marion’s energy and passion for our sport,” WTA Chairman and CEO Stacey Allaster said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mason, OH (Sports Network) – Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli announced her retirement Wednesday night, citing constant pain in her body. Bartoli, the No. 8 seed this week at the Western & Southern Open, a hardcourt U.S. Open tune-up, lost to Romanian Simona Halep, 3-6, 6-4, 6-1, in the second round. “That was actually the last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[248],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3625,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3594\/revisions\/3625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}