Ajla Tomljanovic's season from hell has continued with the Australian No.1 forced to officially withdraw from Wimbledon.
A year after becoming the first Australian woman to reach successive singles quarter-finals at the All England Club since Wendy Turnbull in 1981, Tomljanovic has lost her race to be fit for the championships starting next week.
Tomljanovic hasn't played since last November after a knee injury cruelly sidelined the 30-year-old seemingly at the peak of her career.
In addition to her back-to-back runs to Wimbledon's final eight in 2020 and 2021, Tomljanovic last year became the first Australian female since the legendary Evonne Goolagong Cawley in 1979 to make the quarter-finals of both Wimbledon and the US Open.
Her watershed 2022 season had the Billie Jean King Cup hero poised to be seeded at a grand slam for the first time, before a shattered Tomljanovic scratched herself from the Australian Open in January.
She also missed the French Open and will now be a dejected observer of her favourite tournament of the year when the grass-court slam gets under way on Monday.
Tomljanovic's absence leaves Daria Saville, herself on the comeback trail from a serious knee injury, as the lone Australian woman certain to make the Wimbledon main draw.
Saville is using an injury-protected ranking to compete having only made her comeback last week in Birmingham from a torn ACL at the Japan Open in September.
Kim Birrell, Olivia Gadecki, Storm Hunter, Priscilla Hon, Jaimee Fourlis and Arina Rodionova all must win three qualifying matches to join Saville in the main draw.
