STRESS FRACTURE BREAKING UP YEAR

When will Kournikova's injury heal?

By Matthew Cronin
tennisreporters.net

PALO ALTO, CA., JULY 23 – Tennis starlet Anna Kournikova may still be the most searched after athlete on the Internet, but she hasn't played a tournament since February due to a stress fracture in her left foot and her prospects for competing this summer remain up in the air.

The popular Russian's handlers are being secretive with the date of her return to the tour. Instead of treating her like a normal athlete with a injury, they shroud her physical progress – or lack thereof – in such a dark veil that one would think they are handling a guaranteed success story, say Julia Roberts with the blockbuster movie deal of her career in her hands.
Unilke Roberts and her Oscar, Anna has been a good but not great player during her nearly six years on tour and has yet to give command performance at any tournament like Roberts did in "Erin Brokovitch."

But the reality is that Anna is treated more like a Hollywood starlette than she is like a tennis player.

Kournikova has "week to week" for the past month and half but has pulled out of three successive tournaments – Eastbourne, Wimbledon and the Bank of the West Classic in Palo Alto, July 23-29 at Stanford University.

"Based on conversations with Anna Kournikova's representatives it is unclear when she will return to the tour," Sanex WTA Tour COO Josh Ripple told tennisreporters.net.

The Bank of the West Classic has been promoting Kournikova's entrance into the tournament for the past six weeks. Tournament Director Peter Tatum told us that her withdrawal could hurt walk-up ticket sales.

NO ANNA, NO WALK-UP
"Kournikova transcends tennis so she's the type of player who does a tremendous walk-up the day after she's announced and the days she's playing," said Tatum of Kournikova, who reached the Bank of the West semifinals last year before falling to Venus Williams. "Her dropping out does hurt, but we already done such great sales for the final weekend that it's not going to kill us."

One of the Sanex WTA Tour's top draws, Kournikova is still scheduled to play the Acura Classic in San Diego (July 30-Aug. 5) and the Estyle Classic in Manhattan Beach (Aug 6. -12). If she fails to play those tournaments, the now No. 13- ranked Kournikova will drop out of the top 20 for the first time since March of ’98. In her now lengthy stint on tour, the talented yet erratic Kournikova has yet to win a singles title.

Kournikova is no longer wearing a cast and is back on the practice courts in Florida, but her camp won't say how hard she is able to practice nor give out a definite return date.

"She's rehabilitating as planned and is still week to week," said her agent, Octagon's Phil De Picciotto tolf TR. "She's only 20-years-old and there's no reason to start playing again before she's completely healthy. She does not want to risk a reoccurrence of the injury. There's different degrees of severity with this type of injury. Only time heals it and we're not sure when she'll be completely healed."
Kournikova hasn't played since losing to Amelie Mauresmo in the quarterfinals of the Open de Gaz in Paris in February. After the tournament, she suffered a stress fracture in the fifth metatarsal in her left foot. The extent of the fracture has never been revealed, nor has the type of treatment she's had on it.

DOCTOR SAYS IS A JONES FRACTURE
Dr. Anthony Saglimbeni, the Director of Medical Affairs at the Center for Sports Medicine at O'Connor Hospital in San Jose, California, said that in all probability, she is suffering from a Jones Fracture, which can take up to a year to heal. "If she's been out this long, its not a common stress fracture, which usually heals in four to six weeks," said Saglimbeni. "Another reason for her being out this long is if she were an anorexic type and wasn't getting enough calcium and good nutrition, which sometimes happens with young female athletes. But she's obviously not anorexic. She appears to be fit. The injury is probably closer to her ankle, where there is restricted blood flow to the bone. The athlete can rest the injury and take weight off it until there is no pain and then start to play, or she can elect to have surgery, where they stick a pin into the foot, connect the bones and try to heal the injury faster. Kournikova could return in another two weeks or another six months."

De Picciotto went to great lengths in an attempt to convince tennisreporters.net not to run with this story, saying that it was a non-story because Anna is week to week and he has been saying this for, of course, weeks. He also went out of his way to say that they were not discussing Anna's injury in-depth and wouldn't say why. Amazingly, he wouldn't categorically deny that Kournikova had surgery, but did say that if she did so in the early spring, "she would have pulled out of tournaments months in advance."

Why not just say no, she didn't have surgery and we're not sure why she has been out so long? Or just state the type of stress fracture and say she has had problems recovering from it?

De Picciotto did say that Kournikova is not considering skipping the rest of 2001 season. "That's false," he said. "She needs to take time to get back into top condition. That's the priority. She has a long career ahead of her."
The question is, when will her "long career" begin again?