WTA: Timea Bacsinszky on injuries: “Painkillers ruined my stomach”

Timea Bacsinsky has not yet won a match on the WTA Tour this season after a protracted injury to her right hand. But the real success of the Swiss is her return to the tennis circus.

“I thought my career was over,” Bacsinszky said to his gaze. With severe arthrosis in her middle finger, she had to end her season early last September.

At first, the Swiss tried to treat her injury conservatively with cortisone injections, but as a price for the painkillers she had swallowed I ruined my stomach,” said Bacsinszky.

Her doctor in Switzerland told her that she “would soon no longer be able to play”. Muscle tears, a cyst and damaged ligaments and tendons allow the 28-year-old to play for a maximum of two years. Bacsinszky, who played her last professional match in Wimbledon in 2017, tried to get further opinions from other doctors and contacted a specialist in Milan.

“He said, “I don’t know how you played with that hand, I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” Bacsinszky said. But the surgeon dared to undergo surgery followed by physiotherapy: “Now you’re getting even better,” he is said to have told the world’s former number nine: “We laughed. But during the surgery I cried, it was very emotional.”

Now, however, it is finally painless in the hand, “but everything else hurts a little”. Bacsinszky has played three matches so far this season, all three were lost. Most recently also at the WTA Premier Mandatory in Miami, where she lost 2:6, 6:2, 4:6 against Ekaterina Makarova in the first round.

“The machine isn’t oiled so well yet. But I have a good feeling,” said Bacsinszky, who has a close friendship with the Swiss skier Lara Gut.

After all, at the beginning of February she secured the double title of St. Gallen with the Russian Vera Zvonareva. There’s not much left, the extra shifts in training have paid off,” said the two-time French Open semi-finalist, “The year is still a long one.