Alice Tubello during the Roland-Garros qualifiers in Paris, May 22, 2024. VICTOR JOLY/PRESSE SPORTS
On an August 2024 evening, on the clay courts of Arequipa, Peru, perched 2,300 meters above sea level, Alice Tubello, then ranked 219th in the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), lost after three hours of a fierce battle, in a third-set tie-break, against a local player with no global ranking but well-versed in extreme conditions.
Still reeling from the effort, the 23-year-old Frenchwoman collapsed onto a bench and let her tears flow. When she instinctively turned on her phone to book her return flight to France, the device started to vibrate incessantly. Instagram messages in every language flooded her screen. “Pathetic whore,” “I hope your arms get broken,” “What a piece of shit,” “May God kill you”…
“I was the number one seed, I had been winning match after match, I knew I was the favorite and that the betting odds were heavily in my favor,” recounted the champion, seated on this chilly late November 2025 day in front of an all-you-can-eat Asian buffet in a Clermont-Ferrand shopping area. That morning, she had hit balls on an indoor court at her club, Stade Clermontois. She would follow up with a physical training session, not far from the restaurant. The next day, she would head to Oise in northern France for an interclub match against the Tennis Club de Méru. This was her typical end-of-season routine as the 430th-ranked player in the world.
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