New Zealand\u2019s top ranked women\u2019s tennis player Lulu Sun has been forced to withdraw from the ASB Classic due to a wrist injury.<\/p>\n
“Since Guangzhou of last year, I have been struggling with a wrist injury following a neck injury,” she posted on Instagram on Friday night.<\/p>\n
“Not being able to have a proper pre-season and being injured left me no choice but to sadly withdraw.”<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old has not played competitively since reaching the final of China\u2019s Guangzhou Open in October.<\/p>\n
Last September, Sun had described the ASB Classic \u2013 set to start Monday \u2013 as her favourite tournament of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis means everything to me. I get to play in front of a home crowd and fans. It is going to be energising and it\u2019s going to be fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her sights are now set on the Australian Open in Melbourne which gets underway on January 12.<\/p>\n
Sun had qualified directly under her world ranking, 90th, allowing for a second Kiwi to compete as a wild card.<\/p>\n
The tournament\u2019s field will be headed by world No. 14 and 15 Ukrainian Elina Svitolina and American Emma Navarro.<\/p>\n
Seven-time grand slam winner Venus Williams will make her seventh appearance at the ASB Classic after returning from a 16-month hiatus at the US Open in August 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand\u2019s top ranked women\u2019s tennis player Lulu Sun has been forced to withdraw from the ASB Classic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[51,111,139,69,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-214101","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-auckland","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}