"It was horrible... My boyfriend had it" - How Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova overcame Lyme disease to reach first Wimbledon QF in 9 years

“Horrible” was the word that Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, the woman who grabbed the first quarterfinal spot at the 2025 Wimbledon Championships, used to describe her ordeal with Lyme disease.

A tick-borne bacterial infection that causes fever, aches, fatigue and a characteristic skin rash, Lyme disease if untreated can spread and cause more serious complications. Thankfully for Pavlyuchenkova, the symptoms were more mild.

That said, the lack of a proper diagnosis complicated things for the Russian player. As she recalled in a recent interview, she would oscillate between feeling extremely fatigued and ready to grind out the big forehands all within a matter of hours.

“It was horrible,” Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova told WTA.com. “I was fatigued, I was very neurotic and irritated. I constantly had headaches -- especially in my right temple, it was pressing on my head all the time.”

"My boyfriend had it," she added. "I literally took the tick off him. It stayed four days under the hair on his neck, I thought it was a brown spot or something, because it's very little. Then on my hand I had a red spot, but [thought] it could be a mosquito. I felt really bad during preseason, but I thought preseason is usually hard. I was falling asleep at 9 p.m. I thought, probably my age and hard training combination."

Pavlyuchenkova, who last made the Wimbledon quarterfinals in 2016, has lived through a lot, tennis-wise. She was a Junior No. 1 at a time when Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin were top of the senior’s game. She played through most of the peak Williams sisters era, watched Serena retire, sat by as a lot of her contemporaries lifted Grand Slam titles and walked off into retirement — Petra Kvitova being the latest with her Wimbledon farewell earlier this week. It was always going to take more than a tick bite for her to hang up her tennis racket.

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Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova's start-and-stop 2025 season

Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova made her career's first grass semifinal at Eastbourne this year. (Source: Getty)

Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova had a full-circle moment at Roland-Garros, where she made her first Grand Slam final in 2021, a decade-and-a-half after she lifted the trophy in Paris as a junior.

Big things were expected from the youngster, who possessed the biggest of groundstrokes and could serve well too. Her transition to the seniors was quick but there was always that sense of her underperforming, never living up to the potential that she showed as the 15-year-old French Open Girls’ Singles title.

Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova had at the time spoken about her struggles with self-belief and wanting to give herself more credit than she had for most of her career. She wanted 2021 to be a fresh start, but fate had other plans.

Injuries followed and she has been in and out of the regular competition ever since. But as seen at this year’s Wimbledon, when playing at her best, there are very few players who can keep pace with her power.

This brings up back to her Lyme diagnosis. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova told WTA that she likely contracted the infection from her boyfriend sometime last year.

The infection can take its time before even beginning to show symptoms. But when they did come, Pavlyuchenkova was understandably harried. A six-week course of antibiotics made her feel better and she jumped right back into training. “Stupid”, she dubbed herself for the inability to listen to her body.

"I would feel OK, so I would go practice," Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova said. "Then I'd almost pass out... But I didn't have any crazy symptoms. I was just tired. That's why it was so difficult, because is it 'tired' where it's still OK to push, or is it 'tired' where you need to be in bed?"

The infection was obviously going to take longer to leave her system, but was eager to get going. And that’s why she pushed herself too hard even when she was clearly not ready.

It all makes more sense now that she has made her diagnosis public. The start-and-stop 2025 season saw her soar to a ninth Grand Slam quarterfinal at the Australian Open only to retire from her match in Abu Dhabi weeks later. She would only win one more match until the grass swing.

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Overcomes obstacles to return to Wimbledon quarterfinal

Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova made her first Wimbledon semifinal back in 2016. (Source: Getty)

With a 6-8 win-loss to show for and a self-proclaimed dislike for grass, even Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova would not have expected to make deep runs at Eastbourne at Wimbledon back-to-back. But that is exactly what she has done. And the secret? Proper rest.

“Before Eastbourne, I had to take a week off because I started again too early and recovery was very bad,” Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova said of the difference between then and now.

When she did decide to eventually slow things down, it all began to fall into place. She was no longer running out of juice in prolonged matches and the sting in her forehand was back.

The 2-hour 27-minute win over Viktoriya Tomova in the Eastbourne opener was the first step. It was the first time in months that Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova was able to bring out the fighter that had made the French Open final in 2021. And she has continued to win marathon tussles: Kamilla Rakhimova at Eastbourne, Naomi Osaka and Ajla Tomaljanovic at Wimbledon.

Against local favorite Sonay Kartal, the Russian brought out the big guns. The final scoreline should have arguably read more dominantly than the 7-6(4), 6-4 that we did get in the end. An electronic line call blunder quite literally robbed her of a game, but she stayed dug deep. And that’s what brings us to the second aspect of what has changed in her game recently: her mentality.

The “you stole a game from me” rant notwithstanding, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova handled the situation like a true fighter. She did not let the line call pull her into a circle of self-destruction. With the score reading 4-5*, she put her head down, stopped complaining and forced to move on to the next goal: getting the break back. And break back she did — saving a set point in the process — before closing out the set soon after.

"I've had so many matches in the past where I would just completely lose it," Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova said. "For sure today, as well, having the crowd like that, having this call, I would probably be still talking about this call to my box for the next ten games probably. Maybe till the end of the match.”

"I think I had poor mentality, back in the past. Not always, but majority of the times,” she added.

And break back she did before stepping onto the gas to close out the set, and eventually the match. The smile at the end said it all.

The Russian has also spoken about wanting to make the most of whatever’s left of her career. She is not the youngest on Tour anymore and the new fitness-obsessed generation is coming at the old guard fast. Her only leverage is the way she plays her tennis, going after every ball hard. When paired with a fighter’s mentality, it has yielded some big results.

As she moves deeper into Wimbledon, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova will once again find herself in uncharted territory, even at 34 years of age. But she has shown a laudable willingness to learn and evolve.

For a very long time, Pavlyuchenkova was fighting her own mind and body as much as she was her opponents. Having won against Lyme disease and her inner demons of self doubt, she could go back to focusing on what she likes best — ripping big forehands and lifting trophies.