After knee surgery sidelined her for nine months, popular Aussie Daria Saville has flown to the UK and is targeting a comeback on grass in Birmingham.
Melbourne, Australia, 15 June 2023 | Matt Trollope
Professional tennis will soon see the return of one of its most popular players, with Daria Saville set to make a comeback during the grass-court season.
The former top-20 player has not competed since September, when she ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in Tokyo – an injury requiring immediate surgery and intensive rehab.
Saville flew to Nottingham to join coach (Jay Gooding) and husband (ATP pro Luke Saville), and is targeting a return in the qualifying draw of the WTA tournament in Birmingham.
“We try and train harder than playing a match, but every time I’ve come back, doesn’t matter how easy or hard it was, you feel like you’ve been hit by a bus. It feels terrible the next day,” she said on this week’s episode of The AO Show.
“But that doesn’t scare me – I just know that I’m gonna feel like crap.”
The ACL injury was a particularly cruel outcome for the Australian, who sustained the same injury nearly 10 years earlier. She had also missed large chunks of competition from 2019 to 2021 due to Achilles and foot injuries.
She had been soaring before her latest setback. Ranked outside the top 600 as she began competing unrestricted in 2022, she returned to the top 50 – an improvement so significant it saw her nominated for WTA Comeback Player of the Year honours.
Season highlights included top-10 wins over Jessica Pegula and Ons Jabeur, a quarterfinal run at the Miami Open, and the final in Granby.
But just two matches after playing that Granby final, in Tokyo, she was struck down in the second game of her first-round match against Naomi Osaka.
“I was pretty miserable straight after the accident. (But) my miserable is not very miserable,” Saville laughed.
“I had the surgery a week after I’d torn my ACL, and from then on, it was like, ‘OK, rehab, let’s go’. I had so much help from Tennis Australia … Nicole Pratt was able to help me on court. So I’m very grateful for that.
“The last few weeks I’ve been hitting with some juniors here (in Melbourne), playing a few sets. It’s hard to know where my level is at.
“I think I have a rough idea, but I think I’m just excited to go away and test myself against WTA players.”
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Tennis.com.au – Tennis Australia…