AUSTRALIAN OPEN

January 14, 2023

Ajla Tomljanovic

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Ajla, obviously unfortunate news today about the injury. Can you talk to us about the decision to pull out of the Australian Open.

AJLA TOMLJANOVIC: There was no time left. If I'm not ready to compete against the best, coming into an event like this, my goal is to make the second week, not just participate.

I'm just, yeah, not close to being at that capacity. It's tough because I do feel like it was improving a lot, but just not... Yeah, ran out of time.

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. What have you actually done to your knee? How long are you actually going to be out of playing for?

AJLA TOMLJANOVIC: Honestly, I wish I could tell you. My knees have been good in my career, but I have had niggles here and there. Who doesn't?

But then in December, it just flared up more than I liked. Got a little worried. I thought, you know, I would have taken care of it by now. But that wasn't the case.

I don't really know moving forward what I'm going to do. I think I'm going to have to reevaluate and get more opinions on it.

But, yeah, I mean, this is the worst thing that really could have happened this year, and it did. Now I can just kind of take a moment and see where I go.

Q. You said you're going to get more opinions. Has there been discussion about having surgery? Is it rest? Any indication of what recovery will be?

AJLA TOMLJANOVIC: Yeah, I mean, you're always going to have one doctor mention it, especially if you see a surgeon. I'm not really in that frame of mind yet.

Yeah, I'm just going to definitely try everything with the conservative methods.

Q. Obviously you've had injury issues in the past. Does that inform at all kind of where you are mentally with how you're approaching this? Does it feel that significant? Are you not letting it feel significant?

AJLA TOMLJANOVIC: It's never easy. I mean, I had surgery, what, like six, seven years ago, it hurts just the same. It sucks (tearing up).

Q. You said in your Instagram post you were sorry. No one is asking you to apologize for what happened. How hard was the decision to pull out, given it is the home slam, all that Australian expectation around you?

AJLA TOMLJANOVIC: Yeah, I mean, there is added pressure to perform, for sure. I don't even know. I wrote that. Just felt natural because I felt like I did let certain people down, everyone that wanted to see me play. Even myself and people around me that are always with me.

Yeah, I don't know, it just came naturally to say that. I didn't really overthink it.

Q. Missing any home Grand Slam is part of your disappointment. Is another part of it that you feel like you're in career-best form, felt like you could make a deep run?

AJLA TOMLJANOVIC: Yeah, if you ask me, this is probably the worst timing ever. I'm sure I would have found and said that even if it happened in six months, it would have been the worst thing ever.

Yeah, if I'm taking a 15-second pity party, this shouldn't have happened now. It's the time when I'm feeling my best self in every way, coming into a slam truly feeling like I deserve to be even a contender. I mean, I feel that way. I'm not coming out here and faking that.

So in a way, like, am I going to have to start from scratch? Probably not. It feels a little unfair, but life's unfair. Part of our job, injuries will happen.

Maybe I did, not a bad thing, but playing on it last year did it, but I would never take that year back, so yeah.

Q. Just touching on that, how long have you been feeling this pain? You say you played on it last year.

AJLA TOMLJANOVIC: No, no. I'm saying if -- I didn't have pain playing last year. If I had that injury on an MRI or something before, without feeling it, I would never take that back or say, Okay, I'm going to rest it, because I can't know in advance.

That wasn't - what do you call it - I didn't do something in practice and all of a sudden I'm injured. Yeah, I'm 29.