Lucas Pouille withdraws from Belgrade

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French tennis star Lucas Pouille won't be playing in Belgrade next week as he has withdrawn from the Serbia Open. Pouille, a five-time ATP champion, played at this week's Monte Carlo Masters, where he made the round-of-16 before losing to Alejandro Davidovich Fokina.

Pouille suffered a back injury during the Davidovich Fokina clash and he is now set to miss Belgrade.

Back injury turned out to be more serious than Lucas thought. Just yesterday, before having exam, he was talking about playing every week before Roland Garros to get more match practice...

https://t.co/U5wBMP6qGz — Oleg S. (@AnnaK_4ever) April 16, 2021

This week, Pouille openly said that he would take the vaccine if offered one. "If I have the opportunity to get the vaccine, I will. At the monent, [tennis players] are not [prioritized for vaccination] ...

If I qualify for the Olympics and am told that I have to be vaccinated to go there, I will do it without hesitation,'' Pouille said.

It was a positive Monte Carlo campaign for Pouille

"After the series of tournaments, I did a good preparation on clay where we worked a lot at the All In Academy in the south of France.

We took the time, we were extremely rigorous. I wanted to have a good season on clay. Last week it was a loss to Berankis after a 2:50 long match, all was not good but all was not bad either. I wanted to go back to work. The state of mind is good.

We have to repeat this kind of match. After a long time, what is very difficult is to be patient. My problem is often being a little too impatient and demanding at this level," Pouille told L'Equipe after beating Ricardas Berankis in the Monte Carlo first round Pouille also feared he would never again be able to play tennis normally following his last surgery.

. "There was a big doubt as to whether I was going to be able to play normally again, especially when I decided to have an operation. There were a lot of doubts, I really did not see the end of it. I have no more pain or apprehension at all," Pouille revealed.

Pouille also added: "This long period allowed me to rethink what I had been able to do in recent years and what I want to improve. The loss of Marbella could have put me in the hole a bit. Another defeat, I could have given up a bit and on the contrary, we remained very positive with the whole team to get back to work immediately."