Sam Stosur: Fighting back to fitness

Sam Stosur is not playing in Cincinnati, just as she was absent from Montreal, and missed Washington DC the week before that. Yet if a rehabilitating Stosur struggles to recall the last time she went for five weeks without hitting a tennis ball, the pain in her injured right hand the first time she tried to return to the practice court made her unscheduled and unwanted hiatus slightly easier to bear.

“Not hitting a ball for that long was odd in itself,” admits Stosur, sidelined with a stress fracture in her second metacarpal and associated muscle tear after struggling to a three-set loss against eventual champion Jelena Ostapenko in the fourth round of the French Open. “But I think because I knew I couldn’t hit and it was that painful, I actually didn’t want to be out there.”

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Instead, the famously well-conditioned 33-year-old found other ways to keep active, including cycling and kayaking, as she followed a carefully plotted comeback path that she hopes will lead to New Haven next week. It is the last tournament opportunity before the US Open for the champion of 2011, but Stosur is philosophical, rationalising that some match play will have to be better than none.

Other than time with coach Josh Eagle on the Sunshine Coast, she has been based mostly at the National Tennis Centre in Melbourne, but was forced to abandon her first attempt to resume hitting when a follow-up scan and x-ray confirmed that it was still too soon. Take two, with low-compression balls, started a fortnight ago. Since graduating to match balls last Monday, so far, so good.

There is certainly some ground to recover, for Stosur’s world ranking has slipped to 43, while her consecutive 452-week hold on the No.1 Australian spot was ended by Daria Gavrilova in June. She will be unseeded at the US Open for the first time since 2008.

“It’s certainly not the best thing. But to be honest, I’ve never been a player who looks at rankings every week and is like ‘oh, calculate the points’ and ‘where am I?’ and ‘how have we got to do?’ and all that kind of stuff, so maybe that’s also a good thing; it doesn’t necessarily stress me out too much.

“But looking at it now I was like ‘oh, am I gonna make the cut for main draw?’ I’ve never really had to think about that. Even New Haven I was second last [in] I think, so I was like ‘far out’. It becomes a real push, and… I guess being on the brink isn’t where you want to be! So it’s again another motivating factor to try and get back up.”

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As the 16th seed at the 2016 US Open, the former world No.4 was a surprise second round loser to Camila Giorgi, but has twice been a quarter-finalist as well as a famous winner of the year’s last major. She enjoys both the city – where she escapes to quiet locales like the High Line – and the lively playing conditions; the fact the balls can fly and her kick serve can jump.

There are memories, too. Grand ones.

“You walk through the corridors, you’ve got all the champions photos up, and you tend to walk past (your own) every day and you’re ‘oh, yeah, that was good, I’m gonna try and do that again’,” she smiles. “Yeah, it obviously was a dream come true to do that, so it’s always nice to go back.’’