Vika pulls out of Montreal, Maria out of Cincy

World No. 1 Victoria Azarenka has pulled out of the Rogers Cup in Montreal with a knee injury. Azarenka was tied with Tamira Paszek at 3-3 in a match that was suspended for rain on Thursday night. She was scheduled to play the second match of the day on todday.  The Australian Open champion played two events at the Olympics, winning the bronze medal in singles and the gold in mixed doubles with Max Mirnyi representing Belarus. Silver medalist Maria Sharapova also pulled out of Montreal, as did doubles bronze medalist Maria Kirilenko. Gold medalists Serena and Venus Williams declined wild card offers.

"The last week took so much energy out of me that I absolutely had no time to recover, and my body is feeling it," Azarenka told reporters. "It was a little bit too quick of a transition for me to come and start the training, so I just felt my knee was not in good shape. I tried yesterday and today it just got worse.  I don't see the point of not giving even 50 percent of my game.I hope it is a short-term thing. I have to kind of stop and take a little bit of time off because I absolutely had no rest for a long period of time just to settle it down and to go from there…I'm not playing anything.  If I cannot play here, there is no chance for me to play anywhere else. The first is to get healthy to make sure I'm 100 percent ready to play at the Open."

On Friday, Sharapova pulled out of Cincinnati with the same stomach virus that took her out of Montreal. She will not take a wild card into New Haven and will return to play at the U.S. Open.