Mattek-Sands hopes to avoid fateful court

LONDON: Colourful American Bethanie Mattek-Sands admits her right knee may never be the same again and that she will ask Wimbledon organisers not to play her on the court where she suffered a horrific injury last year.

The former world doubles number one collapsed to the ground on Court 17 during a second-round singles match against Sorana Cirstea last July, screaming “please help me” as it took 20 minutes for medics to arrive and stretcher her away.

It was later revealed she had suffered a dislocated kneecap and needed surgery.

The 33-year-old’s long road back brought her to Roland Garros this year, where she claimed her first Tour-level singles win since the injury.

Although Mattek-Sands said she feels physically “very good”, she admitted the knee may never be the same again.

“It’s been holding up and I’ve been training and playing a decent amount of matches and it’s recovering good day-to-day, which is what I’m happy about,” she told reporters in Paris.

“I don’t think it’s ever going to be the same as my left one... talk to me in 10 years and it still might be different.”

The outside courts, especially 17 and 18, at the All England Club were widely-criticised in 2017, with some players claiming the surfaces weren’t as good as previous years.

And Mattek-Sands said that “for sure”, she would “ask not to be on that court” at the 2018 championships which start on Monday.

The injury didn’t only prevent Mattek-Sands, a seven-time Grand Slam doubles champion, from taking to court, but from normal day-to-day activities.

“The beginning was the most difficult because I had to keep my leg straight for six weeks and I really couldn’t do anything,” she said.

“I needed help getting in and out of bed. If I needed to go to the shower or go to the bathroom, I needed someone to help me get there. It wasn’t that I wasn’t able to play, it’s that I wasn’t able to live my life the way I’d been used to.

“If I got hungry, I couldn’t just go to the kitchen and get some food so I think that was the biggest thing. So going from being a professional athlete to that was just a very big contrast.”

Mattek-Sands has always been well-known for her unusual fashion sense on the tour — she wore a jacket with tennis balls attached to the sleeves at Wimbledon in 2011 — and said she made the most of her time off by taking her creativity into doing up her new home.

“Fashion-wise, I like being creative so I kind of took all of my colourful ideas that I wear and brought them to the house, so that’s an ongoing project,” she said.