Tennis:Defending champion Kim Clijsters has pulled out of the US Open due to a stomach muscle injury. Clijsters suffered a partial tear of her left stomach muscle in Toronto earlier this month in what had been her first appearance since picking up a foot injury in June.
The four-time grand slam winner also said she would also have to skip tournaments in Japan and China scheduled for September and October.
"Two weeks of rehab was not enough to heal this injury. Obviously I'm very disappointed. I trained very hard this summer and felt in a good shape to play the US Open," said the 28-year-old.
"Now there is nothing else I can do than to rest and have treatment every day. If a gradual approach is not taken, I will relapse in the same injury, and therefore I have also no other possibility than to withdrawal from the tournaments in Tokyo and Beijing."
Clijsters also had to miss Wimbledon this year and she has suffered a series of injuries since she won the Australian Open in January. In fact, the world number three has played only five matches over the past five months, during which she has nursed shoulder, wrist, ankle and foot injuries before suffering her latest setback.
The Belgian retired in May 2007 before marrying basketball player Brian Lynch and giving birth to a daughter. She returned to the WTA tour in 2009 winning that year's U.S. Open just weeks into her comeback.
Andy Murray, meanwhile, was hardly at his best but did enough to book a semi-final spot at the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati with a 6-3 6-3 win over Gilles Simon.
In baking conditions, the world number four rarely looked like worsening his six-one record against Simon, but struggled with his serve and his ground strokes at times before finding some consistency in the second set.
Murray had to encounter a handful of shaky moments in a match that was played at a slow, often mundane pace, but a gradual improvement in his first-serve percentages — he won 78 per cent of the points on it — saw him home in an hour and 35 minutes.
He will now meet the winner of Rafael Nadal and Mardy Fish in tomorrow‘s semi-final.