Maria Sharapova celebrated her impending return to the pro circuit with a Facebook post.
Fellow pros, coaches and commentators reacted to the news of Sharapova's shortened suspension on social media.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport has partially upheld Sharapova's appeal reducing her sentence for testing positive for the banned substance meldonium from two years to 15 months.
That nine-month reduction means the former world No. 1 is eligible to return to the WTA Tour on April 26th, 2017.
Minutes after the CAS decision was issued, Sharapova said she's "counting the days until I can return to the court."
Here is some social media reaction to Sharapova's partial victory of her appeal.
In a June interview, Roger Federer, Sharapova's fellow Nike endorser, said players found guilty of doping have "gotta be banned."
"It doesn't matter if they did it on purpose or not," Federer said in Stuttgart last June. "I don't really see the difference. You need to know what goes into your body. You have to be 100 percent sure of what's going on and if you're not then you've gotta be banned. Of course she's got the right to fight the case, everybody else as well."
In the immediate aftermath of Sharapova's announcement that she had tested positive for meldonium, world No. 2 Andy Murray said Sharapova deserved to be banned.
“It’s not up to me to decide the punishment, but if you’re taking performance enhancing drugs and you fail a drugs test, you have to get suspended,” Murray told the media at Indian Wells.
World No. 1 Novak Djokovic, a long-time Sharapova friend, said the case illustrates the need for better communication between the game's governing bodies and players when it comes to anti-doping policy.
"Those kind of things, you know, need to be communicated better I think in order not to kind of damage the player's career,” Djokovic said in Indian Wells.
Photo credit: Brisbane International