Leylah Fernandez says a trying season of injuries and losses has tested her mental fortitude.<\/p>\n
She expects to come through it as the tennis calendar shifts to the hard courts.<\/p>\n
“This season has been a lot more downs than ups,\u201d Fernandez said. \u201cI’m just happy that I have the right team around me, the right people around me to bring me back down to earth, not think of the worst-possible situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually feel a lot better now that I’m back home, started training, took a couple of days off, and just feeling physically ready, mentally prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fernandez, ranked 25th in the world, has won five career WTA titles \u2014 all on hard courts \u2014 but is 12-19 in singles this season following a 1-4 run on grass, including last month\u2019s first-round exit at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old from Laval, Que., said she dealt with \u201ca couple of physical problems\u201d earlier this season and struggled to recover once the losses began piling up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat played into the confidence in my game when wins weren’t coming in,\u201d she said in an interview from Miami on Thursday. \u201cI guess there’s just a domino effect from the beginning to now. But again, I’ve gone through some tough moments in my career and I’ve always come out on top at the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fernandez preferred to keep her physical issues a secret for now, saying only that it could make for \u201can interesting story\u201d once she\u2019s ready to share details.<\/p>\n
The five-foot-six lefty was working through a similar slump last year when she suddenly opened the hard-court season with a D.C. Open victory, rattling off wins over women\u2019s stars Jessica Pegula and Elena Rybakina en route to the biggest title of her career.<\/p>\n
Fernandez was scheduled to fly to Washington on Friday to defend her title at the WTA 500 event before entering the National Bank Open, which runs Aug. 1-13 in Toronto.<\/p>\n
She said she\u2019s in a good headspace following a brief post-Wimbledon reset that included reflecting on why she fell in love with tennis in the first place.<\/p>\n
“I try to come back to the very basics of things, like why I started playing tennis, if this is still something that I want to do,\u201d she said. \u201cI would try to ask myself these questions and of course at the end of the day it’s always like, I love playing tennis because I always want to improve myself, I love the competition that comes with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fernandez has also thought about where she stands in her career. She has been in the Canadian tennis spotlight since her run to the 2021 U.S. Open final, but at still only 23, she swings between believing she has plenty of time and feeling pressure to reach her goals.<\/p>\n
“It’s weird because a lot of people say I have a lot of time, and for the longest time I’ve been thinking, \u2018Well, not really,\u2019 because a career kind of ends in between 10 to 15 years, depending on what age you start,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd some people would say, you don’t have time. And I’m like, ‘Well actually, maybe I do because a season is long.’<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s kind of a push and pull.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fernandez still has goals of cracking the WTA\u2019s top 10 \u2014 she reached a career-high No. 13 in August 2022 \u2014 and winning her first Grand Slam.<\/p>\n
Any time she\u2019s felt things start to slip away, she\u2019s leaned on her entourage, which includes her dad and coach Jorge Fernandez, to help her stay positive.<\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially this year when I was thinking, \u2018No, I don’t got time, I gotta do better, I gotta win matches.\u2019 The team with me that’s travelling was saying, ‘Hey, slow your roll. Results will come, just focus on the process,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cHopefully soon, the wins are gonna come.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fernandez has also found support in Vincent Boily, her boyfriend and a para hockey player who represented Canada at the Milan Cortina Paralympics. The two began dating last year after Boily watched Fernandez, on a short turnaround from the D.C. Open, crash out of the National Bank Open\u2019s first round in Montreal.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery unfortunate that he saw one of my worst matches,\u201d Fernandez said with a laugh. \u201cBut it was kind of funny because a couple of days later, he messaged and was like, \u2018Hey, before you leave I’d love to see you for a coffee or something.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cHe seemed like a very interesting person, and from that breakfast that we had till now we’ve always kept in contact. He’s a very sweet guy, he’s funny. He makes me laugh and also puts things into perspective for myself and my results so far.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leylah Fernandez says a trying season of injuries and losses has tested her mental fortitude. She expects to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-821738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}