Ho Chi Minh City: Carolina Marin who was working her way back from a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in her right knee she sustained in the Indonesia Masters final on January 2019, saw her comeback trail hit a bump Wednesday when she lost to Thailand’s Supanida Katethong 22-24, 20-22 in 48 minutes.
Marin posted a message on her social media page after her loss in the Vietnam Open first round.
“After more than 7 months I’m happy to be back on court but it was a defeat! Next up: China Open.”
As some of us may have known that a ruptured ACL most commonly occur during sports that involved sudden stops or changes in direction, jumping and landing — such as football, badminton, basketball and downhill skiing. There are different degrees of ACL injury, the London Olympic women’s singles champion, Li Xuerui was out of competition for 600 days since sustaining a same injury at the Rio Olympics in 2016. Li was only able to make a return in 2018, but still, she was not able to play exactly at the same level as she was before the injury.
At China Open, Marin was handed a tough draw as she will take on this year’s World Championships runner-up, Nozomi Okuhara of Japan in the first round.
In men’s singles, Malaysia’s World No. 69 Soo Teck Zhi fought back from dropping the first set to beat Adulrach Namkul of Thailand 12-21, 21-17, 21-11 in 46 minutes. He will take on compatriot Soong Joo Ven in the second round.
Another Malaysian men’s singles player, Tan Jia Wei also had to dig deep to edge past Siddharth Pratap Singh of India 14-21, 21-11, 21-18 and will face-off against another Indian player, Subhankar Dey next.
Meanwhile, men’s singles No. 1 seed Daren Liew who had a bye in the first round, will battle Siril Verma of India on Thursday. Verma defeated Iskandar Zulkarnain of Malaysia 21-18,21-7 in the first round.
