TIL Desk Sports/ Former world number one tennis player Maria Sharapova should not be fast-tracked into next month’s French Open as she returns from a doping ban, insists Polish rival Agnieszka Radwanska. With double French Open champion Sharapova currently unranked, all eyes will be on the French Tennis Federation (FFT) next month when it decides whether or not to hand the 30-year-old a wildcard into the tournament.
Sharapova makes her comeback to the WTA Tour after 15 months out in Stuttgart next week, after gaining a wildcard, and has also been given invites to play in Madrid and Rome. Roland Garros organisers will be wrestling with the moral conundrum surrounding a wildcard — or free entry into the French Open — given that Sharapova is the biggest draw card in women’s tennis right now, and arguably much needed given the absence of Serena Williams who earlier this week announced her pregnancy.
Regardless, Radwanska believes entry to the year’s second grand slam tournament would be a step too far. “Now in Germany, next in Spain, but so far she hasn’t been invited to play at slams in Paris and London and in my opinion that’s how it should remain,” world number eight Radwanska told.
