Ons Jabeur's tennis timeout shows growing need to address problem of player burnout

The National

6 days ago

In a poignant message shared on social media by Ons Jabeur earlier this week, in which she announced she would be taking a break from professional tennis, one particular sentence stood out to me.
'Right now, I feel it's time to take a step back and finally put myself first: to breathe, to heal, and to rediscover the joy of simply living,' wrote the Tunisian tennis star.
The joy of simply living – a fundamental need we often struggle to fulfil, or, even worse, forget to pursue.
For professional athletes, especially tennis players, being on tour 11 months a year, chasing points, prize money, titles, and success, while constantly switching time zones and being away from loved ones, can make it increasingly difficult to find the joy of simply living.
From the countless conversations I've had with players over the years, I've realised burn out hasn't just become a common occurrence in the world of professional tennis, it's become pretty much inevitable.
While physical burnout can be easy to identify because it typically involves an injury or a specific pain felt in a specific part of the body, mental burnout is far trickier to detect.
Players often attach their happiness – or lack thereof – to wins and losses on the court, and they find their identity too intertwined with tennis.
That can be very dangerous in a sport where a competitor can lose every single week because only one champion is crowned at the end of each tournament. Everyone else walks away feeling like a loser.
Those feelings a player attaches to every result can mask the true underlying struggles he or she is grappling with internally.
The easy 'fix' for most tennis players is to just power through, and look ahead to the new week in order to chase a better result. But sometimes powering through is not the answer and that's what Jabeur, and a few others, have come to realise.
The former world No 2 has been battling injuries and illness for the majority of the last two years. She took four months off at the end of 2024 to deal with a shoulder issue but she still didn't look or feel like herself when she returned in 2025.
'Deep down, I haven't truly felt happy on the court for some time now,' confessed Jabeur, who is famously dubbed the 'Minister of Happiness' back home in Tunisia.
Her husband and fitness trainer Karim Kamoun posted a message on social media expressing his full support of Jabeur's decision.
'True strength isn't always found in pushing through. Sometimes, it's in knowing when to pause, breathe, and heal. Ons Jabeur's decision to step back isn't a setback, it's the foundation of a powerful comeback,' wrote Kamoun.
'Champions don't just fight; they know when to recover. And when she returns, it won't be as the same player … it'll be as something stronger.'
The more I speak to unhappy players on the tennis circuit, the more I understand the complexity of their situation. From the outside, it seems like taking the occasional break from competing and travelling is an obvious way to preserve one's mental health and avoid potential burnout.
But taking time off is one of the hardest decisions a player can make.
A couple of months ago at Roland Garros, Jabeur said her decision to stop competing last August because of her shoulder should have been taken much earlier but she felt the pressure to keep going.
'We have a lot of guilt inside us, saying we're not doing enough or it's not enough,' said the three-time major finalist.
'The pressure from sponsors, the pressure from the ranking, the pressure of providing, I don't know, some players provide for their families as well. It is a very tough sport, unfortunately. I'm learning. I'm 30 years old, but I'm still learning in that.'
Whether it's the 52-week ranking system that could see you drop points every week you don't perform well, or the bonus pool formula that penalises players for missing events by docking percentages from their end-of-season bonuses, or the mandatory tournaments scheme that could slap you with a zero-pointer for skipping one – it's essentially like having an F count towards your GPA.
There are many reasons tennis players feel like they can't walk away from the tour for a short while.
Which is why players like Jabeur – and many before her such as Amanda Anisimova, Naomi Osaka, Bianca Andreescu, and Emil Ruusuvuori to name a few – choosing to take a break is considered a bold and inspiring move.
In an ideal world, players would treat potential mental burnout the same way they would deal with possible physical issues.
Just like athletes pay a great deal of attention to injury prevention via work with their strength and conditioning coaches, why aren't more players looking ahead and thinking about their career longevity by preserving their mental health and keeping an eye out for early signs of mental burnout?
Several young players have told me they never think about taking time off or pacing themselves on tour because they want to 'maximise' on their current opportunities as much as possible because there is no guarantee how long they'll be able to compete at this level.
Grigor Dimitrov, who at 34, has navigated lots of highs and lows in tennis, believes many young players are surrounded by large teams that can insulate them from reality.
'They feel so protected. I always say that artificial surroundings that everyone has created around them, it does not allow things to go in,' the Bulgarian told The National recently at Wimbledon.
'So they're more or less a little bit bulletproof but also they haven't really seen disappointments, they haven't really seen failures, they haven't really seen bad things in their lives.
'So that already itself puts you in that cloud nine thing and you keep on rolling with it. Of course you want to capitalise the best you can.
'The younger you are, the more you do, the more money you get, the more everything has increased, the more popular you get, the more of the Instagrams and all the Twitters and the likes and all that, you get a lot more of it and I get it.'
The flip side of that is that you can also ignore how you really feel.
Players such as Madison Keys and Andrey Rublev have found great value in working with psychologists rather than solely relying on mental coaches.
While a mental coach can give you tools to deal with stressful situations on court and other issues related to your tennis, psychologists will talk to you like a human being first.
'I can only speak for myself. It's been incredibly helpful to me,' said Keys of her decision to speak to a therapist.
'I've tried sports psychologists in the past, and I think for me just everything being so focused on just the sport and just tennis was not as helpful as I needed it to be.
'Really going to someone and looking at my overall life and how that was influencing how I felt on the court probably made the biggest difference for me.
'I feel like as tennis players, from a pretty young age, it just happens where our identity becomes very wrapped up in being a tennis player.
'That's great, but when you have the tough kind of weeks, months, years on tour, that can really take a toll on how you think about yourself as a person.
'So being able to dive into that and figure out how to separate the two and know that you're not just a tennis player, you're a full person that has all of these other really great attributes and other interests and just different things in your life.
'That was really a really important piece for me, and I think that kind of made the tennis a little bit easier.'
Keys clinched a maiden Grand Slam title in January this year at the Australian Open and has credited the work she has done with her psychologist for her breakthrough just a couple of weeks shy of her 30th birthday.
Rublev, who has openly discussed his battle with depression, was asked to give advice to his peers on tour who may be struggling with mental health issues.
At Wimbledon, Alexander Zverev spoke about feeling 'empty' and 'lonely' away from the court and how he is generally 'lacking joy'.
Casper Ruud told reporters in Madrid the tennis tour felt like a 'rat race' and that he was 'running in a hamster wheel that never got anywhere'.
Rublev's advice for his fellow players is to look inward. 'To be honest, it's nothing to do with tennis. It's just you can find excuses, how exhausted or mentally tired from playing non-stop, non-stop, but it's nothing to do with tennis,' said the Russian world No 10.
'In the end, tennis is just the trigger point. It's something inside of you that you need to face. It happens to everyone, because Sascha [Zverev], he really loves tennis, and Casper, and many players, they do love tennis. The ones who don't love, who don't like tennis, they are more relaxed.
'They don't really care because maybe they have different priorities, but the ones who love tennis, the tennis triggers you.
'You tell them to, tell Sascha or someone to take a break. It will get tough for him to take a break. He would love to play. For sure, Casper, maybe, for him it's not also easy.
'So, yeah, like I said, it's nothing to do with tennis. Tennis is just the trigger moment.'
Karen Khachanov echoed those sentiments and said he chose to take three weeks off post-US Open last year because he 'wasn't in the best state of mind' during the summer.
'At the end of the day it's not only about having this time off, it's about really being fair, honest and satisfied with yourself. So what is really bothering you, why you are not enjoying it?' asked Khachanov.
Anisimova is a prime example of how taking time off to address burnout and mental health concerns can really be beneficial for one's career in the future.
The American spent eight months away from the sport before returning in 2024 and has now reached a maiden Grand Slam final at Wimbledon.
Jabeur is just the latest in a string of players speaking up and choosing to put themselves first. Here's hoping others will take notice and opt to prioritise their mental well-being, because the way I see it, burnout may seem truly inevitable but it can also be avoidable with the right approach.