One year after her horror injury in Wimbledon, Bethanie Mattek-Sands has made peace with her very personal place of terror. The American competes in the quarter-finals with Lucie Safarova (Czech Republic).
By Ulrike Weinrich from Wimbledon
Bethanie Mattek-Sands just wanted to drive those demons away forever. And she did it with pure confrontation. Shortly before the start of this year’s Wimbledon tournament, the 33-year-old ran to Court 17, where a real tennis drama had taken place almost exactly a year earlier.
“It wasn’t an easy walk for me. But I had already played through all this in my mind’s eye during my rehab,” reported Mattek-Sands and was not ashamed of her tears: “When I was there, I was able to process it.
The right-hander from Rochester, who was otherwise so vivacious, stayed on the lush green for a long time, her legs wrapped around her after a while, her eyes looking down. There was an almost devout silence. “It made me feel better.”
Twelve months earlier, the images of Court 17 had caused a collective shock. These were scenes that you normally only know from contact sports – not from tennis. Bethanie Mattek-Sands lay on the sacred lawn of Wimbledon for minutes surrounded by a gaggle of helpers with horror written all over their faces.
Her husband Justin held his wife’s head tight. “I didn’t want her to see the condition of her knee,” he said later. In her singles match against Sorana Cirstea (Romania) Mattek-Sands slipped to the net and twisted her knee. At 90 degrees, as a doctor said later.
The American, one of the funniest and most popular players on the tour, fell to the ground and was in great pain: “Please help me, please, please, please,” she begged. At the edge of the pitch, her double partner Lucie Safarova (Czech Republic) cried. Together they had won three of the last four Grand Slam tournaments at that time.
“I’ve lost it. I’ve never seen an injury like this before. The knee was in a bad position. You only know something like that from movies,” said the shocked Cirstea afterwards. The next day Mattek-Sands reported in a live broadcast on Facebook that she had suffered a patella tendon tear. In addition, the kneecap was dislocated.
But the woman, who changes her hair color as often as other colleagues change the grips, fought back. “It all made me stronger,” said Mattek-Sands, who will meet Gabriela Dabrowski/ Yifan Xu (Canada/China) with her friend Safarova in the quarter-finals. The title would be a dream. However, “BMS” celebrated their personal triumph over the evil spirits of the past shortly before the tournament – on court number 17.