Six-time Grand Slam doubles champion Joe Salisbury said he will take a break from tennis, due to anxiety which left him with physical symptoms and a \u201cfeeling of dread.\u201d<\/p>\n
Salisbury, a former doubles world No. 1, told BBC Sport<\/a> he was not planning a return before April, having made the decision during the Asian hard-court swing this fall, for which he was absent.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve had heart palpitations, a feeling of your heart beating all around your body,\u201d Salisbury said. \u201cYou feel like your body is almost a bit shaky, almost like your whole body is vibrating a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n Salisbury, 33, said those feelings made him \u201cnot want to be playing and competing\u201d at certain times through the year, citing a feeling of sickness in his stomach, which left him \u201cstruggling to sleep\u201d and \u201cstruggling to eat well, eat enough\u201d.<\/p>\n Salisbury and Neal Skupski finished as runners-up at six events this season, including the French Open and U.S. Open, and were defeated by Harri Heliovaara and Henry Patten in the doubles final of the ATP Tour Finals in Turin Sunday. In 2022, Salisbury became just the third British man to hold a No. 1 spot in the ATP Tour rankings across singles and doubles, after Andy and Jamie Murray.<\/p>\n He is now ranked No. 10, and with his break is set to miss the Australian Open in January.<\/p>\n Salisbury said he managed his anxiety to a point where it had not \u201caffected my tennis that much,\u201d but added: \u201cIt\u2019s taken an extra toll emotionally and mentally to do that. It\u2019s meant that it\u2019s just not been enjoyable being at a lot of the tournaments that I have played.\u201d<\/p>\n He said he has not spoken to many people about his anxiety, but feels it is \u201csomething which a lot of other people are having to deal with.\u201d<\/p>\n Experiences with mental health issues in tennis have previously been discussed by players on the tour including Naomi Osaka and Amanda Anisimova. Osaka said in 2021<\/a> she had battled \u201clong bouts of depression\u201d and took a break from her playing career, while Anisimova took an indefinite break<\/a> from tennis in 2023, saying: \u201cIt\u2019s become\u00a0unbearable being at tennis tournaments.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six-time Grand Slam doubles champion Joe Salisbury said he will take a break from tennis, due to anxiety…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-300144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}