Samantha Stosur, the 2011 US Open winner, startled the tennis world by returning from retirement for a one-off appearance at the 2022 Strasbourg Open on Sunday.
Samantha Stosur said last year that the 2022 Australian Open will be her final tournament, after intending to focus completely on doubles following the first Grand Slam of the year, where she was knocked out in the second round by Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. Tennis experts were perplexed when the 38-year-old was named to the draw for a clay-court tournament in France, where she lost 6-2, 6-1 to Harmony Tan.
“Didn’t think I’d be doing this again until two days ago. Nice feeling and emotions being to play on this court in singles again. If Roland Garros calls me and says, ‘You wanna play?’, sure. But, no, my time for singles is finished. This wasn’t a comeback to singles, it was just a good opportunity. It was good, it was fun, considering I didn’t know I was competing here until a couple of days ago."
"Going into here was a difficult scenario, but mostly I was just excited to get another chance of playing singles in a place where I’ve had a lot of success and enjoy myself. Overall, I actually hit the ball really well — I hit some balls as if it were five years ago when the ball was going exactly where I wanted it to! But on other points, she was making me move side to side and it was hard.”
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