Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova says she is taking time off because of her shoulder

Marketa Vondrousova, the 2023 Wimbledon champion, will take a few months off the tennis tour because of continuing problems with her surgically repaired left shoulder, she wrote Thursday on social media.

"Patience and time are my priorities right now, but I believe it will all be worth it," Vondrousova posted. "So hopefully back on the court soon."

The 25-year-old left-hander from the Czech Republic has played only eight matches so far in 2025, going 4-4, including a second-round loss to eventual champion Mirra Andreeva at Dubai last month in Vondrousova's most recent event.

She hasn't entered a Grand Slam tournament since a first-round loss at Wimbledon in July, sitting out the US Open last September and the Australian Open this January. She also missed last year's Paris Olympics shortly before having shoulder surgery in August.

Her 6-4, 6-2 exit against Jessica Bouzas Maneiro at the All England Club made Vondrousova the first defending women's champion there to lose in the first round the next year since 1994—and only the second in the sport's Open era, which began in 1968. The only other women's returning champ to bow out immediately at Wimbledon was Steffi Graf.

Vondrousova was the runner-up at the French Open as a teenager in 2019, and she took home a silver medal from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, before her milestone championship at Wimbledon in 2023, when she became the first unseeded female singles title winner at the grass-court major.

But her career repeatedly has been interrupted by injuries. In 2022, for example, Vondrousova sat out from April to October because she had two operations on her left wrist after a stress fracture left bone fragments in two different spots.

Once ranked as high as No. 6, she currently is No. 45.

"Stepping out of the court again. I am still struggling with (a) shoulder injury," Vondrousova wrote Thursday. "Although it's not easy, I now have a few months of intensive training and rehabilitation to get my arm back together."

Howard Fendrich has been the AP's tennis writer since 2002. Find his stories here: https://apnews.com/author/howard-fendrich. More AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis