This is terrible. If reports out of Australia are correct, Alicia Molik will announce her retirement from professional tennis soon.
From Fox Sports Australia: Molik reportedly set to retire
AUSTRALIA's former world No.8 Alicia Molik is reportedly set to announce her retirement from tennis.
Sources within the Molik camp said the 24-year-old, who has been hampered by inner ear virus vestibular neuronitis, was set to quit the sport within the next few days, Fox Sports TV news reported.
The illness, which affects her vision and balance and drains her of energy, stopped Molik in her meteoric climb up the women's tennis rankings.
Yesterday Molik's manager said that some of the damage suffered from the vestibular neuronitis may be irreversible and I imagine that would be the reason for her retirement.
I feel so badly for her. At this year's Australian Open I hadn't quite taken to her yet and rooted against her in her quarterfinal match with Lindsay Davenport, the one Davenport finally won 9-7 in the third. Now I so wish Molik had pulled it out and been able to go further in the tournament. She would have faced Nathalie Dechy in the semis and that certainly would have been a winnable match for her. Against Serena in the finals - well, it would have been quite a show with the pro-Australian crowd.
Now we'll (and more importantly she'll) never know what she could have accomplished in her career.
The most important thing, of course, is her health. From what we've seen since her comeback, I think she'll be able to live a normal life but the physical and mental coordination that professional tennis requires is now beyond her. That's the best case scenario anyway - I hope she's healthy enough that it won't bother her in other aspects of her life.
I suspect she may have a tough transition. When Lleyton Hewitt got engaged to Bec Cartwright after the Australian Open the Aussie press went to Molik and asked, "Well, what about you?" Her response was that there was no way she'd be getting engaged in the near future, that there wasn't even any guy in her life because she was devoting all of her life to tennis for the next few years. It's difficult to go from that kind of single-minded focus to finding something meaningful to do with the rest of your life under these circumstances.
In all likelihood, she'll end up working with the Australian tennis media in some capacity in the short-term. Did anyone catch the report she did from the Filderstadt players' party recently for Eurosport? You can catch a clip of it on this page and she was really quite a natural.
But naturally that won't provide the same adrenaline rush and feeling of accomplishment that life as a professional tennis player does. Hopefully she'll find her way.