A comeback is no guarantee of success, but few sports produce more comebacks than professional tennis.
They are coming in increasing numbers, especially in women’s football, where it is becoming increasingly common to return to action after pregnancy.
After the WTA stars Elina Svitolina And Caroline Wozniacki returned last season, the trend continues in 2024, with Naomi Osaka and Angelique Kerber, both former No. 1 players and multiple major champions.
Both are new mothers who have been out of the game for more than a year and both will be in the draw when the 2024 season begins in earnest on Sunday with the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam tournament of the year, which Kerber won in 2016 and Osaka in 2019 and 2021.
“I’m so happy to see it,” said Kim Clijsters, the former world No. 1 from Belgium, who made one of the most successful comebacks after motherhood and won the 2009 United States Open as a wildcard. “I know that when I started, some of the rules that apply now, didn’t exist. I know that Serena [Williams] has certainly changed a lot about that: the different guidelines just make it easier for players not to feel the pressure, the pressure that female athletes feel to delay a pregnancy. They may feel ready and want to do it, but because of their careers and sponsors they may keep putting it off.”
Significant obstacles remain, particularly for players who were not highly ranked before their maternity leave or who do not have the financial means to tour with their families and support teams. But the landscape is changing.
Tennis has a history of mothers winning singles majors: Australians Margaret Court and Evonne Goolagong did it before Clijsters in the 1970s and 1980s. But the number of working mothers on tour has increased. Serena Williams reached four major singles finals, losing them all, after returning to the tour in 2018.
Osaka, 26, and Kerber, who turns 36 on Thursday, are at different stages of their careers, but both return after more than a year away.
They will be joined at the Australian Open by Emma Raducanuthe big surprise of the 2021 US Open champion, who returns from multiple operations at the age of 21 after almost eight months of absence. They would all have been joined in Melbourne by Rafael Nadal, one of the best players in history, had Nadal not withdrawn due to a new injury suffered during his comeback tournament in Brisbane last week.
Nadala 22-time Grand Slam singles champion, missed nearly a year of action with a left hip and psoas muscle injury that required surgery in June. In Brisbane, after two convincing victories full of winners and panache, he was defeated by Jordan Thompson in the quarterfinals. Nadal later revealed that he had suffered a small muscle tear that was not in the same place as his previous injury.
Comebacks come with a lot of uncertainty, especially at 37. But the oft-injured Nadal is planning to return to action in what he believes will likely be his final season. His goal is to peak for the European clay-court season, which will culminate with the French Open and the summer Olympic tennis event, both held at Roland Garros, where Nadal has been most dominant, winning a record 14 singles titles.
Osaka has more time on her side. She left the tour at the end of 2022 and said she briefly considered retirement because she was no longer enjoying the game. But she is back after the birth of a daughter in July and, despite being ranked No. 833 and losing in the second round of her comeback tournament in Brisbane, she has shown flashes of sparkling and overwhelming form.
“It would be sad to lose Naomi to tennis at such a young age,” said Paul Annacone, the former coach of Pete Sampras, Roger Federer and Sloane Stephens. “It would certainly be a blow to the game, but I think if she stays mentally and physically healthy, I don’t see any reason why she can’t come back and give herself a chance in the latter stages of the majors. But for her, a lot of it will depend on how well the mind leads the body.”
Osaka’s first serve and groundstrokes remain some of the most powerful weapons in the women’s game, and her big bang ground game is similar in approach to the leaders of the women’s game: No. 1 I’m going to SwiatekNo. 2 Aryna Sabalenka and no. 3 Elena Rybakina.
However, many believe Osaka’s mobility and variety need work, and while she has expressed a desire to become more versatile, she remains a single-surface threat with little experience or success on grass or clay courts. Yet most of the tour, including the Australian Open, is played on the hard courts that suit Osaka’s high-risk game, and her enthusiasm to compete was clearly visible in Brisbane.
“The most important thing I’ve heard from her is that she’s super motivated,” Clijsters said. “I think she can do anything if she has that and the belief. To win a Grand Slam, everything has to fall into place, of course. There are a lot of good players who are really hungry to win and they make it difficult. But Naomi can definitely have a great run in that frame of mind.”
Clijsters has experienced successful and unsuccessful comebacks. Coming out of early retirement in 2009, she won three majors before retiring again in 2012 due to nagging injuries and a desire to spend more time with her growing family. But when she returned to the tour in 2020 at the age of 36, she struggled with the isolation on tour due to the pandemic and played just five singles matches in two years, losing them all.
She is now retired and lives in New Jersey with her husband and three children. She is an honorary president of the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
“Now that I’m older, and I look back, the best times in my career were the times when I was training for a big goal,” she said. “Holding the trophy up is a very brief moment. I think the addictive part of it is the part before the big moment.
“I think a lot of people from the outside have a hard time accepting that once you’ve won a lot of Grand Slams and once you’ve been world number one, you enjoy playing tournaments and maybe you lose early. It’s not fun to lose, don’t get me wrong, but there’s still fun in the preparation and going out there and trying to find solutions. Of course the goal at the end of the day is to hold the trophy up, but that’s not what drives you every day when you wake up. It’s the little goals.”
Osaka, like the others making their comeback, is unseeded for the Australian Open, meaning they could have drawn anyone in the first round. She drew the No. 16 seed Caroline Garcia, while Kerber will face Danielle Collins, a former Australian Open finalist who is also unseeded.
Kerber returned to competition in the United Cup, a mixed men’s and women’s team event. Her team, Germany, won the title, despite winning only one of her five singles matches. She still has a beautiful movement and can read the flow of the game, but her counterpunching game seems to many to be lacking at the moment.
But they, Osaka, Raducanu and Wozniacki have the potential to make seeded players suffer in Melbourne.
“They’re all floats, which is quite scary,” he says Jessica Pegulathe American was ranked at number 5, referring to dangerous unseeded players who could land anywhere in the draw.
It should make for a gripping opening week, but the real excitement would come if Osaka or another member of the comeback squad can go deep in the second week as well.
