Dec 30 (Reuters) – Australia’s Daria \u200cKasatkina said she feels mentally recharged ahead of her \u200creturn to tennis at the Brisbane International after taking \u200ca six-week mental health break.<\/p>\n
Russian-born Kasatkina, who switched nationality in March, shut her season down in October citing the mental strain of a heavy tour schedule \u200dand emotional stress from her battle to \u200dgain full Australian competition \u200celigibility.<\/p>\n
“For us tennis players, it is very difficult to accept that \u200dyou \u200bneed a break,” she told Australian Associated Press on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“We have tournament after tournament and we have to \u2060defend the points from the previous season which \u200cis an additional anxiety. I just felt that if I pushed for longer \u2060I would \u200dhave got in a deeper hole.”<\/p>\n
Kasatkina, who has not returned to Russia in over two years after coming out as gay and speaking \u200dout against the war in Ukraine, \u200csaid it took her some time to be at ease away from tennis.<\/p>\n
“The first three weeks was a disaster,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It was really difficult. I just wasn’t enjoying it. I found myself being super unhappy and in a really dark place.<\/p>\n
“After six weeks I feel like I am finally recharged.<\/p>\n
“I needed to do this \u200cto understand there are certain limits you can push through and then you have to give yourself space to stay a sane person.”<\/p>\n
The Brisbane International, \u200bone of the tune-up events for the Australian Open Grand Slam, begins on Sunday.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Karan Prashant Saxena in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Rutherford)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dec 30 (Reuters) – Australia’s Daria \u200cKasatkina said she feels mentally recharged ahead of her \u200creturn to tennis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,6675,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-380328","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-na","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}