A comeback offers no assure of success, however few sports activities present extra comebacks than skilled tennis.
They’re arriving wave after wave, significantly within the ladies’s sport, the place returning to motion after maternity has grow to be extra widespread.
After the WTA stars Elina Svitolina and Caroline Wozniacki got here again final season, the pattern is continuous in 2024, with Naomi Osaka and Angelique Kerber, each former No. 1 gamers and a number of main champions.
Each are new moms who’ve been out of the sport for greater than a 12 months and each shall be within the draw because the 2024 season begins in earnest on Sunday with the Australian Open, the 12 months’s first Grand Slam event, which Kerber gained in 2016 and Osaka in 2019 and 2021.
“I’m so comfortable to see it,” stated Kim Clijsters, the previous world No. 1 from Belgium who made probably the most profitable post-motherhood comebacks, successful the 2009 United States Open as a wild card. “I do know after I began, among the guidelines which are in place now weren’t in place. I do know that Serena [Williams] positively modified numerous that: the completely different pointers which simply makes it simpler for gamers to not really feel the strain, the strain that feminine athletes really feel to postpone a being pregnant. They may really feel prepared for it and wish to do it, however due to the profession and sponsors, they could preserve suspending it.”
Vital obstacles stay, significantly for gamers who weren’t extremely ranked earlier than their maternity leaves or lack the monetary means to journey on tour with their households and assist groups. However the panorama is shifting.
Tennis has a historical past of moms successful singles majors: The Australians Margaret Courtroom and Evonne Goolagong did it within the Seventies and the Nineteen Eighties earlier than Clijsters. However the variety of working moms on tour has elevated. Serena Williams reached 4 main singles finals, dropping all of them, after her return to the tour in 2018.
Osaka, 26, and Kerber, who will flip 36 on Thursday, are at completely different phases of their careers, however each are returning after greater than a 12 months away.
They are going to be joined on the Australian Open by Emma Raducanu, the big-surprise U.S. Open champion in 2021, who’s getting back from a number of surgical procedures at age 21 after almost eight months away. All of them would have been joined in Melbourne by Rafael Nadal, one of many best gamers in historical past, if Nadal had not withdrawn due to a brand new harm suffered throughout his comeback event final week in Brisbane.
Nadal, a 22-time Grand Slam singles champion, missed almost a 12 months of motion due to an harm to his left hip and psoas muscle that required surgical procedure in June. In Brisbane, after two convincing victories filled with winners and verve, he was overwhelmed by Jordan Thompson within the quarterfinals. Nadal later introduced that he had a small muscle tear that was not in the identical spot as his earlier harm.
Comebacks include ample uncertainty, significantly at age 37. However the oft-injured Nadal plans to return to motion once more in what he has stated is most definitely his last season. His purpose is to peak for the European clay court docket season, which is able to culminate with the French Open and the Summer season Olympic tennis occasion, each staged at Roland Garros, the place Nadal has been at his most dominant, successful a file 14 singles titles.
Osaka has extra time on her facet. She left the tour in late 2022 and stated she briefly thought-about retirement as a result of she was not discovering pleasure within the sport. However she is again after giving delivery to a daughter in July and although she is ranked No. 833 and misplaced within the second spherical of her comeback event in Brisbane, she confirmed flashes of glowing and overpowering kind.
“It could be unhappy to lose Naomi to tennis at such an early age,” stated Paul Annacone, the previous coach of Pete Sampras, Roger Federer and Sloane Stephens. “It could positively be a success to the sport, however I feel if she stays wholesome mentally and bodily, I don’t see any cause that she will’t get again and contend and provides herself probabilities on the latter phases of majors. However numerous it will be how nicely the thoughts leads the physique for her.”
Osaka’s first serve and groundstrokes stay among the most potent weapons within the ladies’s sport, and her big-bang base-line play is comparable in strategy to the leaders of the ladies’s sport: No. 1 Iga Swiatek, No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka and No. 3 Elena Rybakina.
Many take into account that Osaka’s mobility and selection want work, nonetheless, and whereas she has expressed a need to grow to be extra versatile, she stays a one-surface menace with little expertise or success on grass courts or clay. Nonetheless, a majority of the tour, together with the Australian Open, is performed on the hardcourts that go well with Osaka’s high-risk sport, and her eagerness to compete was evident in Brisbane.
“A very powerful factor I’ve heard from her is that she’s tremendous motivated,” Clijsters stated. “I feel when she has that and the assumption, I feel she will do something. After all, to win a Slam, every little thing has to sort of fall into place. There are numerous good gamers on the market who’re actually hungry to win and who make it robust. However Naomi can positively have an ideal run on this state of mind.”
Clijsters has skilled profitable and unsuccessful comebacks. When she ended her early retirement in 2009, she went on to win three majors earlier than retiring once more in 2012 due to nagging accidents and a need to spend extra time together with her rising household. However when she returned to the tour once more at age 36 in 2020, she struggled with the isolation on tour due to the pandemic and performed simply 5 singles matches over two years, dropping all of them.
She is now retired for good, residing together with her husband and three kids in New Jersey and is honorary president of the Worldwide Tennis Corridor of Fame.
“Now that I’m older, and I look again on it, the most effective instances in my profession had been these instances after I was coaching for a giant objective,” she stated. “Holding up the trophy is a really brief second. What I feel is the addicting half about it, is the half earlier than the large second.
“I feel lots of people on the skin wrestle with accepting that when you’ve gained numerous Grand Slams and when you’ve been No. 1 on this planet that you simply discover enjoyment in enjoying tournaments and possibly dropping early. It’s not enjoyable to lose, don’t get me flawed, however there’s nonetheless an enjoyment within the preparation and in getting on the market and looking for options. After all, the objective on the finish of the day is holding up the trophy, however that’s not what drives you day by day while you get up. It’s the little objectives.”
Osaka, just like the others beginning their comebacks, shall be unseeded for the Australian Open, that means they might have drawn anybody within the first spherical. She drew the No. 16 seed, Caroline Garcia, whereas Kerber will face Danielle Collins, a former Australian Open finalist who can also be unseeded.
Kerber returned to competitors on the United Cup, a combined males’s and girls’s workforce occasion. Her workforce, Germany, gained the title, although she gained simply one among 5 singles matches. She will nonetheless transfer and browse the movement of play fantastically, however her counterpunching sport seems to many as underpowered at this stage.
However she, Osaka, Raducanu and Wozniacki have the potential to make seeded gamers undergo in Melbourne.
“They’re all floaters, which is fairly scary,” stated Jessica Pegula, the American ranked No. 5, referring to harmful unseeded gamers who might land anyplace within the draw.
It ought to make for a gripping opening week, however the true thrills would come if Osaka or one other member of the comeback crew can go deep within the second week, as nicely.