Serena Williams withdraws from French Open before playing Maria Sharapova

Sandra Harwitt | Special to USA TODAY Sports

Show Caption Hide Caption Serena Williams pulls out of the French Open Serena Williams has pulled out of the French Open, prior to a scheduled rematch with Maria Sharapova in the tournament’s fourth round.

Serena Williams will not win the first Grand Slam she’s played since giving birth to her child last September.

In a shocking development, the most highly anticipated match thus far at the French Open — a fourth-rounder between Williams and 28th seed Maria Sharapova — did not take place when Williams withdrew with a chest muscle injury.

While theirs is a lopsided head-to-head with the 451st-ranked Williams leading an overwhelming 19-2 over Sharapova, their encounters have always been considered a top rivalry in this era of the game as much for what took place on the court as their far different off-court personalities.

“I unfortunately have been having some issues with my pec, my pec muscle, and has unfortunately been getting worse to the point where right now I can’t actually serve,” Williams told the media in Paris when announcing her withdrawal. “It’s kind of hard to play when I can’t physically serve.”

The 36-year-old Williams, playing in her first Grand Slam tournament since winning her 23rd Grand Slam title at the 2017 Australian Open while eight weeks pregnant, was looking strong and capable en route to the fourth round. She defeated Kristyna Pliskova in the first round, 17th-seeded Ashleigh Barty and 11th-seeded Julia Goerges on Saturday.

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“The first time I felt it was against Goerges in my last match,” Williams said. "That’s when I started to feel it. I was like, it was really painful and I didn’t know what it was. In my doubles yesterday I tried a lot of different tapings, and I tried lots of different types of support to see how it would feel under match circumstance. It didn’t really get a lot better.”

This marks the 16th time Williams has withdrawn prior to a match in her career.

The last time she did so was a 2015 round-of-16 encounter where she was supposed to play Klara Koukalova of the Czech Republic at the Bastad, Sweden tournament. That was one of three times that Williams failed to play a match in 2015, a year in which she won the first three Grand Slam tournaments.

She had never failed to take to the court for a scheduled match at a Grand Slam. She did, however, retire once in a Grand Slam match against Virginia Ruana Pascual of Spain in the third round at Wimbledon in 1998.

Williams’ coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, said in a Tennis Channel interview that Williams was initially taking a wait-and-see approach to the Sharapova match, but knew on Monday morning it would not be possible to play. She is scheduled to have an MRI in Paris on Tuesday.

“There was no chance she would be able to play normal tennis,” Mouratoglou said. “She was not able to serve today. The pain was much too strong. And also second thing, if she would’ve played without being able to serve normal she would take the risk to make the injury really, really worse.

“It was really, really disappointing because she felt she was ready for the tournament and worked so hard to be here.”

Sharapova will play the winner of the fourth round match between third-seeded Garbine Muguruza and Ukrainian Lesia Tsurenko in the quarterfinals.