French Open runner-up Maja Chwalinska was one point away from winning her Wimbledon first-round match before a slip on the grass changed everything.<\/p>\n
Poland’s Chwalinska stormed to the Roland Garros final as a qualifier in June and looked set to continue her good form at 6-2 5-2 up against Mananchaya Sawangkaew on the first day at SW19.<\/p>\n
Chwalinska created a match point on her opponent’s serve, but, while running for a forehand at the back of the court, slipped and fell awkwardly.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old gingerly got to her feet and touched the back of her right ankle before grimacing.<\/p>\n
After qualifier Sawangkaew held serve, Chwalinska called for the physiotherapist and put an ice towel around her face as she received a medical timeout.<\/p>\n
But with her ankle heavily strapped she lost the next five games as Thailand’s Sawangkaew forced a decider, and the Pole’s movement only grew worse in the third set.<\/p>\n
Chwalinska also appeared to be suffering with a lower back problem as she fell to a 2-6 7-5 6-2 defeat.<\/p>\n
The pair shared a hug at the net before a group of Polish fans sang Chwalinska’s name as she left the court, with one official carrying her kit bag for her to try and protect her back.<\/p>\n
“It’s Wimbledon. I don’t want to retire [injured] in Wimbledon,” Chwalinska said.<\/p>\n
“I think I would have many regrets if I would retire, so I just wanted to continue.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"French Open runner-up Maja Chwalinska was one point away from winning her Wimbledon first-round match before a slip…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-664784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}