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Venus Williams’ unlucky run of accidents has led to her lacking the 12 months’s first Grand Slam match. The Australian Open introduced Saturday that Williams will withdraw from the 2023 occasion due to an undisclosed damage she sustained throughout a match in Auckland, New Zealand this week. It would’ve been the 42-year-old’s twenty second main at Melbourne Park.
As the No. 1,003-ranked participant, Williams was heading to the Australian Open as a wildcard entry. Australia’s very personal Kim Birrell will now take her place within the match set to start Jan. 16.
Williams, a two-time Australian Open runner-up, final performed within the match in 2021. It was then when she suffered ankle and knee accidents throughout a second-round match in opposition to Sara Errani, starting a fairly regarding pattern. Williams finally missed the 2021 US Open and the primary three Grand Slam tournaments of 2022 due to accidents. She made her highly-anticipated return on the 2022 US Open, however fell to Alison van Uytvanck within the first spherical.
This Australian Open would’ve been fairly the chance for Williams, because the participant who defeated her within the 2003 and 2017 finals has left the game. That participant, after all, is her sister Serena Williams, who introduced her plans to retire final August however later stated the probabilities of her returning in some unspecified time in the future are “very excessive.”
