Heather Watson has confirmed she will miss this month’s Australian Open but says she is on course to return from injury by the end of February.<\/p>\n
The 33-year-old has slipped to 269 in the world and ninth in the British rankings having been out since late August with a tendon issue in her glute – her first major injury in a 17-year professional career. <\/p>\n
She last played in the first round of qualifying for the US Open, having lost in the first round at Wimbledon on 1 July. <\/p>\n
Watson, who won the mixed doubles at Wimbledon in 2016 and reached the women’s doubles quarter-finals two years later, has recently resumed training.<\/p>\n
In a post on Instagram from Florida, where she is taking part in winter training, Watson said she is looking forward to getting back to action.<\/p>\n
“I’ve really missed my purpose, and the everyday challenge tennis gives me,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I cannot wait to be back on tour competing again. Hopefully if all goes to plan, at the end of February.<\/p>\n
“Missing Australia this year has really hurt my heart, but also lit a fire inside me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heather Watson has confirmed she will miss this month’s Australian Open but says she is on course to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-387206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}