Italian Stars Vinci, Schiavone Confirm Intent To Play In 2017
2010 French Open champion Francesca Schiavone and 2015 US Open finalist Roberta Vinci each expressed their desire to continue playing tennis through the 2017 season.
Finishing inside the Top 20 for the fourth time in the last five years, Vinci spread the news on her official Instagram:
”I still feel like I have the desire and enthusiasm to try and do something in what is perhaps the thing I’m best at, playing tennis,” she said in quotes translated by Sports Illustrated.
“Now don’t start asking me if this will be my last year!!! See you in Australia.”
Vinci previously announced that she would make 2016 her final season, but began reconsidering her options as early as last winter, when she won the biggest singles title of her career at the St. Petersburg Ladies Trophy and became the oldest woman in WTA history to make her Top 10 debut.
She told WTA Insider at the Huajin Securities WTA Elite Trophy Zhuhai that she would make her final decision over the off-season.
“I don’t want to say, ‘Yes, I’m continuing,’ and then in one week, I stop, or say, ‘No, I’m retired,’ and then after a week, you see a video of me practicing,” she said in October.
“If it’s yes, then yes. If it’s no, then no.”
The always-entertaining Schiavone took her fans on a more colorful journey through the off-season, launching a web series asking them to pick one of several careers she could pursue – tennis, of course, being one of them.
“Do you know something?” she asked in the video below [translated by Giulio Gasparin]. “This shirt doesn’t fit me. It’s not the right time to wear it. I like to work outdoors, grab a tool and hit some balls.
“No more glasses, no more elegant shoes… I want to go back to my trainers, I need them. I love to feel alive, I love to play tennis and this is my present to you: I don’t know for how long, but my present to you in 2017 is for playing tennis and it is a present to myself too!”
