Author: akeslo

April 9, 2020

April 9, 2020 “My mom passed away in 2018. I was at the club I used to train at when I got a call after practice. I found out my mom went to sleep and didn’t wake up. It was 100% unexpected. She was very young, only 52 years old, but was supporting a lot of stress from taking care of my father. Back in 2016 my father was in an accident. My father fell while he was cleaning our horse stables and became paralyzed. It was days before the Rio Olympics, which I almost decided to skip, but ended up going in the end. My father was in the bed in the next room when my mom passed away. It was an incredibly tough four years. From my father’s accident he became a quadriplegic, couldn’t move from the neck down. He used an artificial breathing machine since he couldn’t do it himself. We had two people, plus my mother, who took care of my father 24 hours a day. Then when my mom passed away, my wife and I had a lot of work considering that he needed all day help. We added a few more people to the (more…)

April 8, 2020

April 8, 2020 “The recent Australian bushfires have devastated large parts of the land I call home. This crisis had also put a literal cloud over the Australian Open, and it is deeply personal to many Australians and, increasingly, many in the tennis community. Tens of people have died, millions of hectares of land have been burnt, much of our wildlife has perished, and entire communities have been devastated after suffering through years of drought. The bushfire smoke had hit South America, and NASA estimated that it would travel the entire globe. As Australians, we live with the threat of bushfire every single summer. Our rural communities are always prepared for the worst, and our firies are true heroes. While my family home in Ouyen were safe, my parents were asked by emergency services to evacuate in December before potentially disastrous conditions could hit our town. My Gran and my cousins were also evacuated from their homes when a sudden grass fire almost struck Wodonga. I’ve also been in constant contact with friends that are firies, fighting on the front line, or who have lost their homes and businesses. While the world looked on and sent their thoughts, prayers and (more…)

April 7, 2020

April 7, 2020 “I started playing tennis when I was six years old. From four to six I practiced gymnastics. It’s one of my favorite sports, especially to watch on TV. When I started gymnastics was never to be a professional or anything. I was getting better and better but one day the coaches came up to my parents and told them I would be too tall for it. Looking back I guess they were right. The summer was approaching and my parents said I should try something else. I said, ‘Why not tennis?’ From the first day I was really into it. I remember rolling my ankle in my house before the first practice but still went. I enjoyed tennis from the beginning but probably because I was so competitive. I hated to lose and needed to win. I do really love tennis. There is nothing quite like playing a night match, especially at Grand Slams. You can tell I love tennis when I spend the whole day on site and the first think I do when I get back to the hotel is turn the TV on and watch more tennis. I remember having one of my longest (more…)

April 5, 2020

April 5, 2020 “It was extremely difficult to make the decision to retire. I played my last match when I was only 27 years old. In my head, I had many more years left in tennis. I was at the peak of my tennis career when I got sick with mononucleosis, which was around two years before I retired. For a long time before I was diagnosed I was stressed, tired and really rundown. Through this all I kept playing. I became sick all the time because my immune system was weak, but I kept pushing. Deep down in my mind I knew something was wrong, but all the tests doctors took came back fine. Even though I was playing well, it was all up and down, until I got mono. I feel like the combination of my bad immune system and seriously overtraining affected me. Mono was just the last thing my body could handle. Doctors said I first got it in Indian Wells of 2011. It wasn’t too bad in the beginning but got worse after my last tournament in Bastad. I didn’t leave my house for six months. After about a year I would begin to feel (more…)

April 3, 2020

April 3, 2020 “I grew up in Tunisia. I started playing tennis at three years old because my mom used to play. I was the youngest one of my brothers and sisters, so she took me to the club with her. It was around this time, from 3-5 years old, I was actually swimming. I was born in Ksar Hellal and moved to Sousse at 5 and that’s when I chose to play tennis. Sousse was great but needed more resources to improve, which is when I had to decide if I needed to leave my home city at 13 years old. There was this school in Tunis that would allow me to train and go to school at the same time. It gave me the chance to train more hours, which is what I needed. It was 140 kilometers from my home. It was very difficult for me to leave my city, it was one of my biggest struggles. It has been a long process since then. Even with all the help I had to figure out a lot on my own. I made many mistakes when it came to coaching, practicing, tournament scheduling, everything. I had to figure (more…)

March 31, 2020

March 31, 2020 “When I was 13, my dad stopped working to travel with me full time. There was already pressure from not being too wealthy and now my father wasn’t making money. People from my hometown thought we were crazy. They watched my dad stop quit his job as a coach at the club to travel with me and they didn’t understand it. When I think back, I see what they saw. All I know is we saw a small a chance to have what we have now and we had to go for it. Even if you are top in the world as a kid, the chance of becoming a top professional tennis player is beyond a small percentage. My family took some big risks that paid off and what I achieved is for all of them. We made many big decisions. Our family is five in total, with an older sister and younger brother. This decision my dad made affected everyone. Not only was my family making less money, now my father was away from my siblings for long periods of time. There was a lot of pressure on the whole family to also keep up with (more…)

March 29, 2020

March 29, 2020 “It was a huge struggle to deal with the pressure of becoming top 10 in the world early on. I truly believe that once I made it there my body was forcing me to take some time off, that something wasn’t right, and that’s why I got injured. I think it all happened for a reason. I learned so much about myself and this sport while working my way back. I appreciate tennis more. I fully believe that if I didn’t get injured I would be completely exhausted in a few years. It would have only been a matter of time until I felt burnt out so I am happy it happened now. I was lucky to gain this experience while I was still extremely young and ready to fight back. I broke into the top 10 for the first time at St. Petersburg in 2016. Then soon came Miami where I got my first injury, which led to many others. A severe wrist problem came and I tried to avoid surgery while playing for nine months. April 2017, I finally decided to get it done. I was out for about six months and my ranking dropped (more…)

March 26, 2020

March 26, 2020 “ I was born with a degenerative disease called Cystic Fibrosis. Things got ugly and I was forced to get on the transplant waiting list. Luckily, 9 months ago I received a double lung transplant. I am very grateful for this beautiful opportunity to be born again However, a double lung transplant isn’t easy and definitely not simple. It is an extremely complex procedure with a tough recovery. Incubation, IVs, some broken bones, 6 chest tubes, bronchoscopies, daily exams, rehab, half a hundred medicines, extreme food/hygiene cares, drug side effects, and the list goes on…I’ve had some post-transplant complications too. I had 2 rejections and I’m struggling with a bronchial stenosis which still prevents me from breathing well. Tennis is one of my biggest passions. In the middle of it all, I managed to get back on court and playing tennis as soon and as often as possible. I haven’t grabbed a tennis racquet since a year and a half before the transplant, except in my living room, just to feel the love for the sport in my hands. I stepped on the court just 2 months after the surgery, not playing but to just feel it (more…)

March 23, 2020

March 23, 2020 “When I was 12, I had to make a decision between tennis and figure skating; I decided to go with tennis. It was my choice, not my parents. It’s not as easy as people may think, it’s so freaking hard. It’s not always beautiful hotels or traveling to nice places. I was 16 and number one in the world in juniors. Within a year, I was #56 in WTA rankings and then everything went down. I went through tough times when I was 20. I was 20 years old when I got married. I was so in love. We only knew each other three months before marriage. We were together eight years before divorce. We both knew we were very young when it all started, but it was what we truly wanted. I was one of the few 20 year olds who rather have kids than travel and see players. I wanted to end my career and didn’t want to continue playing. I didn’t want to do it any longer. I couldn’t take traveling to different hotels every week and not remembering my room number. I was winning so often as a junior, and then it just (more…)

March 21, 2020

March 21, 2020 “There was always a little bit of a fight between my father and my mother. My mother wanted me to study more, which is why I was in school while playing tennis until I was 18. In Russia most professional athletes are done studying around 12 years old. It might have been the reason I wasn’t as good as my friends for some time, but I have no regrets. There were many tough times before the help from the federation and sponsors, when there wasn’t enough money. There were matches where I lost and all I was thinking about was the extra 100 dollars I could’ve made. The toughest period for me was the switch from juniors to pros. I ended at 13 in the world in junior tennis. I started to quickly understand, after playing futures, just how difficult it would be to get from 700 to 300 in the world. You needed to save as much money as possible while trying to win five or six futures as quickly as possible. At the time I was lost, didn’t know how to do that because there were so many other players trying to do the same (more…)