Former world number one Simona Halep has admitted that the events of the last two years have had an impact on female tennis players. Two years ago, the WTA Tour was suspended for five months due to the pandemic.
Last year, Peng Shuai’s disappearance caused many players to react and want to know what was going on. Now the war between Russia and Ukraine has an impact on the whole world, and not only in the world of tennis.
“In my opinion, it’s exhausting for everyone and it gives us anxiety,” Halep told Eurosport’s Reem Abulleil. “It’s not easy to deal with everything and yes, I feel like everyone is struggling, not just tennis players, not just the tennis world.
I feel like the world is struggling and a lot of people are suffering for one reason or another and I don’t feel like everyone is stable right now.”
Halep: stress is probably a reason for injuries
“The world is not balanced, that is the feeling I have.
So it’s not easy to deal with and anxiety can bring you down most of the time and that’s probably why we players struggle,” Halep explained.
“We can’t be as consistent anymore and the injuries I think come from stress and that’s why you can’t be physically healthy and you can’t perform.”
Furthermore, Halep admitted that at some point she no longer felt like tennis was the top priority. “Yes, at one point I thought that tennis was not that important anymore because of everything that is going on.
With the pandemic at first I was super scared, and now the war, which also scared me a lot. But it’s something we can’t control,” Halep admitted.
“Tennis doesn’t mean anything if you think about the problems the world is in today. But yeah, I think we have to live day to day and if we can get back to playing tournaments and doing what we love, we’re very lucky.” do, we should take advantage of it”
On Thursday, Halep beat Zhang Shuai 6-2, 6-3 in her first match in Madrid to face Paula Badosa in the second round.
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