Maria Sharapova’s US Open redemption story has no place on center stage, according to one of her rivals.
Caroline Wozniacki, coming off a disappointing, three-set loss in the second round to Ekaterina Makarova of Russia, made sure not to leave Queens without one last parting message for the tournament’s organizers.
The world No. 5 sounded particularly peeved Thursday morning that Sharapova, the former No. 1 who has dropped all the way to No. 146 after serving a 15-month drug suspension, has played both her matches on Arthur Ashe Stadium while Wozniacki was exiled to an outside court.
“I think, you know, putting out a schedule where the No. 5 in the world is playing on court five, fifth match on, after 11 (p.m.), I think that’s unacceptable,” the 27-year-old from Denmark said. “And when you look on center court — I understand completely the business side of things and everything — but someone who comes back from a drug sentence, performance-enhancing drugs, and then all of the sudden gets to play every single match on Center Court, I think that’s a questionable thing to do.”
Sharapova is playing in her first Grand Slam since failing a drug test at the 2016 Australian Open and has quickly stolen the show with her dramatic, three-set wins in the first and second rounds.
Wozniacki isn’t buying the hype.
“It doesn’t set a good example. And I think someone who has fought their way back from injury and is No. 5 in the world deserves to play on a bigger court than Court 5 and finally they moved us to Court 17, which is a really nice court actually, and we had great atmosphere out there,” she said.
“But, um yeah, I think they probably should sometimes look into what they need to do in the future.”Wozniacki hinted at the USTA’s favoritism toward the five-time Grand Slam champion earlier this year, calling it “questionable” that Sharapova was offered a wild card to play in Stuttgart in March, a tournament that started two days before her suspension was up.
“I think everyone deserves a second chance and I think that she’s going to come back and she’s going to fight her way back,” Wozniacki said of Sharapova at the time, according to Tennis.com. “But at the same time, I feel like when a player is banned for drugs, I think that someone should start from the bottom and fight their way back, because it’s different from an injury.”
Sharapova, 30, has taken full responsibility for the failed test for a drug, meldonium, that she said she’d been taking for 10 years for a magnesium deficiency and hadn’t noticed had been added to the list of banned substances.
Sharapova’s biggest critic this year, 76th-ranked Canadian Eugenie Bouchard, flamed out of the US Open even earlier, dropping her first-round match in straight sets. Bouchard, once considered a rising star, in April called the Russian a “cheater” who shouldn’t be allowed to play professional tennis again.