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It’s been well over a year since Bianca Andreescu has played a competitive match, but the wait will finally end (we think) when the 20-year-old Canadian, currently ranked No.8 in the world, takes the court for Australian Open.



It will be a tricky ask, given that the Canadian has not played since October of 2019 and, furthermore, due to the fact that she was one of the 72 players who has been forced to endure a “hard quarantine” in Melbourne.

Apparently that has not worked well for Andreescu, who announced her withdrawal from this week's Grampian Trophy, a WTA-500 event added specifically for those players who were placed in hard quarantine after landing in Australia.

Bianca Andreescu's latest comeback, 15 months in the making, delayed once again https://t.co/DsjFHoGGFx

— Christopher Clarey (@christophclarey) February 1, 2021

At this point it's nearly impossible to predict what type of form Andreescu will carry into the match.

Tennis Now asked former World No.1 Lindsay Davenport about Andreescu’s chances in a conference call for Tennis Channel’s coverage of the Australian Open (before we learned of her withdrawal from the Grampians Trophy), and the American expressed both hope and worry about Andreescu’s future.

First we asked her if her perception of what Andreescu can accomplish long-term in the sport has changed due to the fact that she has suffered so many injury setbacks in her career already.

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“A little bit, right?” Davenport said. “Now we're going on 15 months, 16 months since we saw her. I think her last tournament was in [Shenzhen] in 2019. You have to have concerns about her body breaking down. I say that only because it's been a couple of different injuries. It hasn't been the same one."

Davenport believes that it’s important for Andreescu to have a clean run of health for a season or two, just to give the athlete confidence in her own body.

“I'd hate to compare her to like del Potro, but you want to be able to see her play a full season, two full seasons, without anything major,” Davenport said. “Everyone has little things that come into play, you might not play a tournament because you pulled a muscle. But the really serious kind of structural injuries to an athlete's body, that gets concerning when it's happening in more than one location.”

Davenport said that patience will be important at the start for Andreescu. Being out of the sport for so long, and then having to suffer the hard quarantine over the last two weeks, will surely make success in February more difficult to achieve.

In other words, it will likely take her time to duplicate the form that saw her rip through the tour in 2019, a season that saw her breakout for her maiden title at Indian Wells before winning the Rogers Cup on home soil and then becoming the first player in history to win the US Open on her debut. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Main draw at the Grampians Trophy, which begins on Wednesday.

Bianca Andreescu set to play her first competitive match since the 2019 WTA Finals. pic.twitter.com/WB1Y2IRaTq

— WTA Insider (@WTA_insider) February 1, 2021

“This is going to be a really tough ask of her in Australia,” Davenport said. “From all that I've read or seen on social media, she was really setting herself up well, training in the Middle East. She's one of the few that has 14 days in a hotel room, not able to hit a ball. That is really tough I think on these players to come out and all of a sudden go into a match situation, let alone the fact you haven't been there in 15 months.”

Davenport believes that if Andreescu can take it step by step and maintain her health, she will soon be a force again on tour.

“I think if she can stay healthy, kind of get her so-called feet wet like in competition, start to get back out there, she's going to be a force,” she said. “We saw how good she is in 2019. I don't know if it will be right, like, out of the gate in Australia. When I was reading the list of players, the 72, [I was thinking] ‘Oh, my gosh, I can't believe it's her. That is such bad luck.’ But I hope she does (have success). Obviously, I'd love to see Osaka play Andreescu when they're at their best. That's what we're all kind of waiting for.”

Tennis Channel’s two-week telecast of the 2021 Australian Open will take place February 8-21st, with more than 25 hours of live matches from the sport’s first major of the season. The network will devote more than 175 total hours to its 14th year of AO coverage, with same-day encores, nightly commentary and analysis in addition to live competition.