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Jennifer Brady is on a comeback trail after a two-year-long injury layoff. Ahead of the 2023 US Open, the American has made some vulnerable admissions about her time on the sidelines.
Brady returned to action in July, at an ITF event in Granby, Canada. She kicked off her 2023 campaign with a win over Kyoka Okamura but lost in the next round to Himeno Sakatsume.
This was the American’s first tournament since her second-round match against Jelena Ostapenko at the 2021 Cincinnati Open. In that encounter, Jennifer Brady was forced to retire due to a knee injury -- which would then keep her out of action for almost two years. Earlier this year, she faced yet another setback when she suffered a foot injury, thus delaying her comeback.
Brady, who is now gearing up to contest the US Open via protected ranking, recently revisited her time on the sidelines. The American confessed to losing the plot and feeling the absence of purpose in her life.
“If somebody had told me, ‘You're going to be out for two full years, go do whatever', I would have done something: get a job, go back to school, do all of it. I just felt like my life had no purpose because I was just playing a waiting game,” she wrote in an essay for Eurosport.
“There was not much that I could do physically, so just trying to find things to kill time to make the days go by. It’s kind of sad now that I talk about it,” she added.
She, however, revealed that she had to commit to her recovery so as to return to the professional circuit.
“I didn't want to have any regrets. If I had gone, 'this isn't working, maybe I'll just go back to school', I would also end up feeling, what if? You just can't really live your life like that. You have to commit and just trust the process,” she wrote.
“I just wanted to play tennis. It is who I am. It is my identity,” she added.
Jennifer Brady also said that, once she was out of the tennis bubble, she was able to view the constant hustle from an outside perspective.
“The tennis world is like a little bubble. As soon as you lose, you're out of the tournament and you book a flight for the next day. You're off to the next event and you're just in this cycle of doing the same thing over and over and not really taking a step back or just looking from the outside and being like, ‘Wow, the life that we live is unbelievable,’” Brady explained in the Eurosport article.
The former World No. 13 stated that she was able to approach her profession with a new understanding of its benefits, which are otherwise taken for granted by the tennis players.
“Some of us complain about things that really are not that big of a deal. Things are a lot tougher in the real world. I want no part of the real world. We have flexibility in our work life, we make our own schedules and we're in charge. We're our own boss and we're extremely privileged to be doing what we're doing,” she wrote.
"You never know when your last match is" – Jennifer Brady
Jennifer Brady rose to prominence in 2020 when she clinched her maiden WTA title at the Lexington Open. Just weeks later, she made her Grand Slam breakthrough by reaching the semifinals of the US Open, where she lost to eventual champion Naomi Osaka.
The American went one better at the 2021 Australian Open as she reached her first Grand Slam final, losing to champion Osaka yet again.
In her essay, Jennifer Brady talked about the uniqueness of tennis and how she will be approaching her matches from now on.
“Tennis is very unique in the sense of how quickly things change; it's a grind. You never know when your last match is. I think just competing and enjoying every single time I step on court is going to be how I look at things,” she shared.
Brady played her first WTA match in two years at the 2023 Citi Open. She defeated Italian Open runner-up Anhelina Kalinina in the opener before being knocked out by Madison Keys.
At the Canadian Open, the 28-year-old defeated Jelena Ostapenko but lost to Elena Rybakina in the next round.
Brady, currently ranked World No. 368, will compete at the US Open on the back of a first-round exit against Donna Vekic at the Cincinnati Open. She will face a qualifier in the opener.
