After scoring the first ever win for the Romanian tennis at the Olympics Games in the Open Era, Monica Niculescu was forced to withdraw after experiencing a lower back injury. A little bit of misfortune for the Romanian player whose road at the 2016 Olympics has been stopped by an injury she had been having since the Bucharest tournament in July.
Injuries have troubled Niculescu for some time.
At the press conference, after she lost in the second round against Polona Hercog, Niculescu talked about several health issues she had been dealing with for a while. Problems which were making her unsure of how her rest of the season was going to look like. Even though she was not sure is she was going to play any tournament before the Olympics, she then decided to take a risk and play some matches.
She played at Washington and Montreal where she was able to get good results only in doubles. At Washington, she lost in the first round against Christina McHale and in Montreal after, getting the win over the young Jelena Ostapenko, she lost against the crafty Agnieszka Radwanska. In the doubles, she had a nearly perfect run. Alongside Yanina Wickmayer, she won the Citi Open and made the final at Rogers Cup where a quite surprising partnership with her fellow Romanian, Simona Halep, managed to impress with their great combining skills, good communication, and impressive court covering. They managed to take out the second seed Caroline Garcia and Kristina Mladenovic in the quarterfinals but fell to the fourth seed Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina in the final.
For Monica Niculescu this might be her last day at the Olympics as she and Irina-Camelia Begu had also been defeated in the first round doubles by the Taiwanese Chan Hao-Ching and Chan Yung - Jan, the number three seed , 5-7 , 6-4, 6-3. She could also join the mixed doubles competition, but the decision of whether she will team up with Florin Mergea for the mixed doubles will be taken on Tuesday.
Benefiting from the walkover, Svetlana Kuznetsova will now play in the third round against the British Johanna Konta who easily moved past Caroline Garcia.