Ekaterina Alexandrova
January 14, 2021
“My parents gave everything they had so I could play tennis. They sacrificed money and property. I worked hard because it was a tough time for my family and I wanted to prove tennis was not useless. I put a lot of pressure on myself because I wanted to change our situation. I was not playing well and my results were pretty bad. It was tough because the tennis world is very unstable. I wanted to stop playing tennis and felt like my career was a waste of money because I was not good enough. I lost motivation to practice. It would have been easy to quit and find another job. In 2016, I was ranked 217 in the world but it was nearly impossible to continue on tour. I was the second alternate for the Wimbledon qualifying draw but was not sure if I should spend the money to travel. If I flew to London and did not play, I could no longer afford to practice. I decided to go all in and we flew to London for more money than we had. I got into the draw and was very excited. We could only afford to stay for
“My parents gave everything they had so I could play tennis. They sacrificed money and property. I worked hard because it was a tough time for my family and I wanted to prove tennis was not useless. I put a lot of pressure on myself because I wanted to change our situation. I was not playing well and my results were pretty bad. It was tough because the tennis world is very unstable. I wanted to stop playing tennis and felt like my career was a waste of money because I was not good enough. I lost motivation to practice. It would have been easy to quit and find another job. In 2016, I was ranked 217 in the world but it was nearly impossible to continue on tour. I was the second alternate for the Wimbledon qualifying draw but was not sure if I should spend the money to travel. If I flew to London and did not play, I could no longer afford to practice. I decided to go all in and we flew to London for more money than we had. I got into the draw and was very excited. We could only afford to stay for