Former world No. 3 Nadia Petrova has announced her retirement from tennis.
The Russian has not played since 2014, and has now officially hung up her racquet.
"It's confusing, somewhat painful—scary, yet also gratifying," said Petrova, who explained that her hip injury could not meet the demands of competition. "I was aggressively doing court work. It started to break down again ... I said to myself, 'I want to start a family. I want to be home more, and I want to enjoy a lot of the things I never had time for while I was on the road.'"
But while Petrova is stepping off the tour, she isn't walking away from the game.
"I plan to stay involved in tennis," she said. "I will be devoting a lot of my time to the sport through charity work, which I will make known soon. I may no longer be competing, but I will never be far from a court. My heart will always belong there."
Joining her in retirement is former No. 25 Jarmila Wolfe, who began her career playing for Slovakia before competing for Australia.
"I have been unable to recover from a back injury that my doctors have advised is now chronic," Wolfe said in a statement. "I would have liked to have played one more Australian Open, with my last-ever match playing in front of the Melbourne Park crowd, and say goodbye properly to the Australian public. But the powers that be declined my wild-card request."
They follow India's Somdev Devvarman, who announced his retirement a couple of weeks ago following several months off the tour.
"One of the things that kept me going and kept me winning was passion,” he said at a press conference. “It kept diminishing every year. Once I realized that, once I knew it was going to be difficult to stay in the Top 100, then it became an easy decision for me.”(http://www.sportstarlive.com/atp/somdev-diminishing-passion-made-me-quit/article9455369.ece)
The 31-year-old and two-time NCAA champion reached a career-high No. 62 in the rankings.