Ons Jabeur has been struggling with her tennis for a while, and she admitted that it's affected her mental health.
The Tunisian player hadn't had a very good month in tennis since last summer when she made the Wimbledon final. It was the second Wimbledon final she played in and arguably her most painful loss ever, at least if we take her word about it.
Since then, it's been a combination of bad play and injuries. It's a vicious cycle because the injuries contribute to the bad play, which then affects confidence, and she's yet to really find a way out of it.
She made a winning start at the 2024 Porsche Tennis Grand Prix but admitted after the win that her mental health had suffered because of the injury struggles and losses.
"Well, it is not the best, obviously. It's been couple of tough months. I didn't expect that an injury could affect my mental so bad. It was affecting me, the knee was affecting so bad, and I didn't realize."
"I kept going and try to play matches even though I knew I wasn't ready, and that didn't help with the level of losing basically against anyone on tour."
Things have looked better in recent weeks as Jabeur was finally able to rid herself of the pain and played pain-free in Charleston. It was a solid outing there, and now she hopes to keep it going in Stuttgart with a really solid comeback win in the first round, which is a good start. Next is Jasmine Paolini, a tricky player who is nearing a Top 10 debut.
"And that was really the time when I start to play really well and I start to play pain-free, you play against Collins in Charleston (smiling). So her level of confidence was in the sky, and mine was trying to survive somehow (smiling)."
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