Ana Ivanovic was once the top tennis player in the world and in a recent Olympics channel podcast she opened up about the pressure top players feel to stay on top.
Ivanovic emerged at the top of tennis at the age of 20 by capturing the Roland Garros title and becoming number one. The Serbian never quite lived up to her full potential and the immense pressure she felt might have something to do with it. Very few players in history are able to withstand the pressure and she cried Naomi Osaka as another example:
“There is so much, strangely, but there is, a lot more pressure on women to perform, to be constantly on top. Osaka, she’s talked a lot about mental struggles and mental pressures she has and everyone has that, I think. It’s just how everyone handles it. And it’s not always nice, it’s not always easy."
"During times in my career, sometimes it was very hard because I was very much focused on the external, on results, on what people think and so on. And then you realise that actually that’s not what matters, it’s what comes from inside. I think the mental part of the game, it’s becoming so much more important than it ever was."
She added:
"What upsets me, I remember, was that many times, people actually didn’t really know what was going on behind the scenes because people just see the tip of the iceberg. Everything else is what we do off court. It’s what we do in a preseason, what we do in training weeks, what we do before matches and no one sees that and why would I want to talk about all these details?"
"I don’t, well, me personally. People make judgements according to what they see, which is not – well, most of the time – the full story. It can get really hard for players to get over it, because they know the truth is different."
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