Angie to take lengthy break for injury recovery

Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post/Nusa Dua, Bali

Angelique Widjaja, whose Wismilak bid crashed in the quarterfinals, plans to take a lengthy rest to allow her nagging knee injury to recover.

Angie said that the Honsel Korean Open, which starts on Sept. 27, would be her last tournament before she took a break. She will return to the scene for the January 2005 Australian Open.

The Indonesian star injured her left knee during her unsuccessful defense at the Volvo Master's Championships in Pattaya, Thailand, in November of last year.

Angie has since failed to find her best form, which resulted in her ranking drop from 95 at the end of the year to 144 at present.

Her therapy plan means that she will miss several WTA tournaments and consequently lose points, causing her ranking to drop further still.

But, she didn't appear to be particularly bothered by that prospect.

"All I want to do right now is to get my knee fixed. I don't care about my rank or points -- I will think about that later," Angie said.

She said, that if she pushed herself to join tournaments, her injury could get worse.

"I used to think that I should maintain my world rank, so I pushed myself to join the French Open in February, and that was a mistake," Angie said.

"I shouldn't have given a second thought to my world rank. I should have done the most important thing first ... fixing my knee," Angie said.

She said that, after she completed her U.S. Open run in New York, she spent several weeks in the country, to have her injury checked, before returning home to take part in Wismilak.

"I can't take the doctor's advice (to take a rest) as I have promised to play in Bali," she said.

Angie began to feel recurrent pain in her knee when she played in Montreal, Canada, early in August.

She said the pain had been getting worse as she headed to Athens for the Olympic Games.

Angie didn't make it past the first round in Montreal after she lost to U.S. player Bethanie Mattek. Her luck did not change as she lost in the Olympic Games to Croatian Karolina Sprem in the second round.

In New York, she lost to Tzipora Obziler of Israel in the first round of the U.S. Open.

Angie, who became the 2001 Wismilak champion as a wild-card holder, lost to U.S. Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova in the quarterfinals, 7-5, 6-1, here on Friday.