{"id":22720,"date":"2020-01-07T10:56:49","date_gmt":"2020-01-07T15:56:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordontennis.com\/?p=22720"},"modified":"2020-01-07T10:56:49","modified_gmt":"2020-01-07T15:56:49","slug":"maria-sharapova-australian-open-wildcard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2020\/01\/07\/maria-sharapova-australian-open-wildcard\/","title":{"rendered":"Maria Sharapova Seems Sure of Getting an Australian Open Wild Card"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Russian star Maria Sharapova played her first match since the <a href=\"\/\/lastwordontennis.com\/us-open\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">US Open<\/a> today against Jennifer Brady. It was a first-round encounter against Jennifer Brady. Although she managed to startle the crowds with some flashy winners, Sharapova lost the over two-hour affair 6-3 1-6 6-7.<\/p>\n<p>Although currently ranked no. 147 in the WTA Rankings, Sharapova seems to believe that she won&#8217;t need to play the qualifying for the <a href=\"\/\/lastwordontennis.com\/australian-open\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Australian Open<\/a>. When asked about the possibility of getting a wildcard, she replied &#8220;I think so, yeah&#8221; and told the interviewer to ask Craig Tiley, the CEO of Tennis Australia, about her situation.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Maria Sharapova fairly confident that she won\u2019t be playing qualifying at the Australian Open. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/BrisbaneTennis?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#BrisbaneTennis<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/b7xGbh2yuv\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/b7xGbh2yuv<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; WTA Insider (@WTA_insider) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WTA_insider\/status\/1214543795133411330?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">January 7, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Former world no.1 and the holder of five Grand Slam titles (at least one in each Major), Sharapova has been on the downfall since receiving a doping ban back in January 2016. Her multiple comeback attempts have been constantly halted by recurring injuries. In the 2019 season, Sharapova was only able to participate in seven events.<\/p>\n<h3>Should Maria Sharapova get one?<\/h3>\n<p>With the reason of her 2016 suspension being a doping ban, giving her wild cards <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordontennis.com\/2017\/04\/29\/maria-sharapova-doesnt-deserve-wild-cards\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">always generates a fair bit of tension<\/a>. But the 32-year-old Russian has already paid her dues and should no longer be punished for her meldonium usage. Especially as the &#8220;drug&#8221; was only forbidden in January 2016 and after taking it all her life, it seems like she just failed to acknowledge the new rules. Although it obviously doesn&#8217;t mean that she shouldn&#8217;t be punished for that, in my view, it&#8217;s enough to give her the benefit of the doubt.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever your opinion on the Russian&#8217;s doping ban is, she <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordontennis.com\/2017\/04\/22\/maria-sharapova-wildcard-roland-garros\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">still brings a great share of attention<\/a> to the women&#8217;s game. Even playing as little as she is nowadays, Sharapova is still one of the most recognizable sportswomen in the world to the general public. Having her in the tournament is a brilliant thing for the organizers from the economical standpoint.<\/p>\n<p>Although she might not be one hundred percent ready to get back to the top echelon of women&#8217;s tennis yet, her game is still there somewhere. And who knows maybe her next event will be the one where she rediscovers the magic?<\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo from Getty.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russian star Maria Sharapova played her first match since the US Open today against Jennifer Brady. It was a first-round encounter against Jennifer Brady. Although she managed to startle the crowds with some flashy winners, Sharapova lost the over two-hour affair 6-3 1-6 6-7. Although currently ranked no. 147 in the WTA Rankings, Sharapova seems [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2968,"featured_media":11535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2,9],"tags":[9234,205,894,10143,15],"class_list":["post-22720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wta","category-featured","category-news","tag-2020-australian-open","tag-australian-open","tag-maria-sharapova","tag-sharapova-wildcard","tag-wta"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2968"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}