'I am not retiring': Ons Jabeur on breathing, healing and returning to tennis

Tunisian star hopes to recapture form that made her a three-time grand slam finalist after two years of health problems left her 'broken and sad' and in need of a break

It’s been almost four months since Tunisian star Ons Jabeur shared a heartfelt message on social media announcing she was taking an indefinite break from professional tennis.

She revealed she had been struggling physically and mentally for the past two years, and wasn’t feeling happy on the tennis court.

“I feel it's time to take a step back and finally put myself first: to breathe, to heal, and to rediscover the joy of simply living,” wrote the former world No 2.

Jabeur: Dubai academy is a 'dream come true'

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This week Jabeur is back at a tennis tournament, not as a competing player, but as an ambassador for the WTA Finals in Riyadh. It is her first appearance on tour since she retired with breathing difficulties from her Wimbledon first round in July, and the smile is already back on the face of Tunisia’s Minister of Happiness.

“My break is going well. I'm discovering life a little bit outside tennis,” Jabeur told The National at the practice courts in Riyadh, where many of her peers were busy training for their matches. “I've been busy with different things, the foundation, the academy. I'm trying to maybe launch new projects as well, so it's been fun.”

The 31-year-old admits her first few weeks off were “a little bit weird”, as she suddenly found herself waking up to no specific schedule. “When your body is used to like six hours, seven hours of training a day and then you just suddenly don't do anything and mostly just eat and go to the beach and relax, I was like, ‘What am I doing? What is this?’

“But then after I got more creative, more active, doing more stuff and definitely my favourite part was spending a lot of time with my family.”

Besides spending quality time with her family, Jabeur took the opportunity to work on projects dear to her heart, like launching her own foundation, and working on creating her new academy, which will officially open its doors in Dubai later this month.

But before delving deeper into her current endeavours, it was important to discuss how Jabeur reached the point of needing to take a break from the sport that she loves.

Was it difficult finding “the joy of simply living” while competing on the tennis tour?

“For me personally, yes,” responds Jabeur. “My life since I was six years old was always focused on my training, my tournaments, tennis, and I didn't feel like I, even though I did things outside tennis, it was always either tennis related or if I want to go on vacation, you always need to count the days because you don't want to miss training. You want to go back on time.

“I wasn't ever free from tennis. Trying to find something that makes me happy outside tennis was difficult and given the very tough two years that I had, it wasn't easy.

“The happy place, the place where I find my joy suddenly became my sadness and basically became the place that gave me depression. And I was kind of scared, and I was thinking like, ‘What if I never find joy on the tennis court ever again?’

“But I don't think that will be the case. And I'm not retiring like most of the people think, I'll be coming back someday.”

Someday – Jabeur doesn’t want to put a timeline on her return to competitive tennis, but she knows she will be back. She hasn’t picked up a racquet since she announced her break – except for once during a kids’ clinic – and says she misses it, but not enough to go and actually have a proper hit.

“I just want to enjoy and when my mind and body tell me you're ready, you want to come back, then I will come back,” she declared.

Jabeur is a popular figure on the tennis circuit, which was evident from the scores of players, coaches, physios, tournament staff, WTA personnel, photographers and journalists, who all clamoured to greet her when she showed up at King Saud University Indoor Arena in Riyadh on Monday.

It is that same community that reached out to her when she announced her hiatus four months ago. “I feel like there were two reactions [to my message]. The supportive one, which I honestly never expected that people would send so much love to me, from different players, to my sponsors, to my family, to people that know me and understood,” she said.

“Always, when you skip something [a tournament] and decide to put yourself first, people would think you're selfish and you don't deserve that. But I got so much love and a lot of members also from the mental health [community] that they reached out to tell me that was a great decision and because they can see I was suffering.”

The second type of reaction she got was from players who felt that her words describing her mental state truly resonated with them.

“Basically, other players seeing themselves in what I was feeling,” she added. “And I felt like I was not only helping myself in this, but I was helping them as well. For me, someone that basically smiles all the time, to take a decision like that and feel broken and sad was kind of like, ‘Oh, wow. We didn't think Ons would feel that way’. I was like, ‘Yeah, basically I'm a human being’.

“I can feel that way, but maybe I'm the least person that would go in and feel that. So that was also a bonus that I had to just talk about it and help other people, you know?”

Tunisia's Ons Jabeur leaves for the locker room after retiring during her first round match against Bulgaria's Viktoriya Tomova at Wimbledon. Reuters

Burnout is becoming more and more prevalent in professional sport, particularly in tennis, which has a grueling 11-month season with limited opportunities for rest. Jabeur doesn’t have a clear answer when she’s asked if burnout is inevitable in tennis’ current structure but she acknowledges the pressure to keep playing can be incredibly high from sponsors, entourage, and other sources.

She vows that when she returns to the tour, she will not compromise her own well-being for the sake of competing.

“I feel I want to choose my tournaments. I want to make the schedule adapt to me, not me adapting to the schedule,” she said. “I will honestly try to speak up more and get the tennis community to treat us better as players, to treat us more as human beings than robots that play tennis, tennis, tennis all the time.

“This is a very beautiful sport and we need to be smart about it. And I just want to be myself on the court. I don't want to feel the stress. I felt so good for the last two, three months that I'm not stressed.”

Instead of living the stress of the tennis tour, Jabeur shifted her focus to launching her foundation and her academy.

One of the first projects she is tackling through her foundation is rebuilding the tennis court at her old primary school, which has been destroyed, and creating a space for kids to do different sports, not just tennis.

“I want to live a meaningful life, not just breathe and eat and just do nothing on the side. I want to give the chance to the kids to dream big, to only worry about working and not worry about the money or the facilities or whatever,” she says.

“I want to do more. I want to sign a contract with different ministries in Tunisia to try to help the community as much as we can.”

The Ons Jabeur Academy is another way the three-time grand slam finalist hopes to affect change and make a difference.

Set to open at HCT – Academy City Campus in Dubai before the end of the month, Jabeur’s tennis academy has been a dream of hers since she was a little girl, before she even fully understood what the word ‘academy’ meant.

Jabeur wants to create a place with a family-like atmosphere, and wants to build a system that values individuality, one that can be tailored for each kid, based on their own set of skills, without imposing a specific playing style on them. She plans on being present as much as she can at the academy.

“Maybe it's a way for me to find the joy again on the court, because seeing the innocence of the kids, there's nothing better than that,” she said. “Maybe it will make me remember when I was younger, how I was having fun. I want to share this with the kids. I want to be there. I want to train there with them and see how it goes.”

While she hasn’t set a return date yet, Jabeur believes when she does eventually come back to the tennis tour, she can recapture the form that helped her reach two Wimbledon finals and become the highest-ranked African woman in tennis history.

“I think the belief is there, but I think what changed is, even if I don't [get back to where I was], I won't put that much pressure on myself,” she explained.

“For me, the most important thing is that I'm gonna go there, I'm gonna try, I'm gonna be happier on the court, and if it happens, then I know I have tried everything in my power to achieve that. I took a break, I took care of myself, I trained hard to come back, and then I'm playing tournaments. If after that it doesn't happen, then I guess it's not meant to be.”