Mother or tennis player? Tatjana Maria proves you can be both

Telegraph

16-06-2025

After completing her fairy-tale triumph at Queen's Club, Tatjana Maria jogged over to her entourage. Forget masseuses, sports psychologists and commercial agents – her court-side clan consisted of a supportive husband and coach, her smiling eldest daughter and her sleepy four-year-old in a buggy.
Here was a picture-perfect example of a mother who, for more than a decade of her sporting career, had made tennis a family affair. Maria had been slogging away on tour, determined to prove that motherhood and sport are increasingly interchangeable, rather than incompatible. Her stunning victory on West Kensington's grass courts was the ultimate proof that mothers in sport – whatever their age – can still crack it.
Intriguingly, many media outlets were conservative when describing Maria's achievement, drenching it with sporting lexicon. The BBC preferred to describe Maria as a qualifier, before mentioning the fact she is a mother of two – perhaps because her set of circumstances were curiously unique and contained all the ingredients for a classic underdog story. This was a woman supposedly past her peak, who had entered the tournament on a nine-match losing streak (prior to Queen's, Maria had succumbed to the world No 229 in the first round of the Birmingham Open).
Others were more forthright in highlighting Maria's win through the lens of motherhood, given she has very much made tennis a family affair. The German's identity as a tennis player and a mother is intertwined to the point she has aspirations to play doubles with her 11-year-old daughter, Charlotte, who began travelling with her to tournaments when she was just three months old. 'It's her dream,' Maria explained. 'And if my body holds, if I really enjoy playing tennis, I would love to keep going and to play the doubles with her.'
52 years in the making ✨🏆 @Maria_Tatjana | #HSBCChampionships pic.twitter.com/wnsQXqOSBK
— HSBC Championships (@QueensTennis) June 15, 2025
Super-mums, such as Maria, 37, in sport are role models. While it is true that sporting fathers are not revered in the same way, why should we shy away from celebrating them? Fatherhood may be emotionally and mentally draining but men's bodies, physically at least, stay the same. In sport, male athletes are almost always spoken about in terms of having renewed purpose and greater perspective with fatherhood. Sir Andy Murray often spoke about how being a parent was a life-affirming experience, providing him with more motivation and better management of the pressures of professional tennis. He probably was not worrying about whether his pelvic floor was strong enough not to leak urine when tossing up the ball when serving.
And therein lies the mesmeric quality to Maria's win – and the myriad women like Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill and Dame Laura Kenny, who have all returned to the top of their game after childbirth. Serena Williams, who returned to the tour after the birth of her first daughter but fell short of her long-time goal of winning a 24th grand slam, was famously persecuted when she wore a catsuit at the 2018 French Open to help with blood clots that arose from her complicated labour in which she almost died.
'For all the mums out there who had a tough recovery from pregnancy – here you go. If I can do it, so can you,' she said at the time, explaining the suit was as much a fashion statement as it was functional. It was later controversially banned by organisers.
I recently met with a top sports gynaecologist who works with a group of British Olympic and Paralympic mothers. She highlighted how a woman's body can undergo irreversible changes during pregnancy, including how a woman's rib cage can expand by up to 7.5 centimetres during pregnancy to accommodate extra room for a growing bump. 'It may never return to its original position,' she said. 'Mad, isn't it?' 'Mum butt' is also one to watch out for – a colloquial term to describe the muscle mass expecting women lose in their glutes because they overcompensate with their quadricep muscles, which can lead to a host of postural, muscle-weakening and fat redistribution changes.
Closer to home, my own rugby-playing sister took the best part of four months to do a press-up because of the profound abdominal separation that had split her middle in two. She could not contain her elation last week when the Rugby Football Union published its groundbreaking postpartum guidance for women – the latest reminder of how the shift towards mothers even in sports perceived as traditionally male is changing.
Seven out of the nine Team GB mothers who competed at the Paris Olympics won medals – but even with the advances of sports science and societal shifts, sporting mums remain so tantalisingly rare.
In tennis, player creches have become a welcome addition at each of the grand slams, but you suspect they serve more of a purpose for men's players and their travelling families – just six of the top 100 women's players in the world are mothers – Naomi Osaka, Elina Svitolina, Belinda Bencic, Victoria Azarenka and American Taylor Townsend have all returned after having children.
Nobody is trying to denigrate Maria's career by overtly referencing the fact she is a mother. Rather, her victory is an empowering reminder that motherhood and elite sport can go hand in hand.