After years in the wilderness, Marion Bartoli returns to tennis with a new-found purpose in life
Exclusive: The former Wimbledon champion talks to The Independent about overcoming one of the most difficult periods of her life to return to the sport that made her
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Your support makes all the difference.It is nearly five years since Marion Bartoli played a competitive match but the 33-year-old Frenchwoman is confident that she can make a successful return to the top.
“I don’t think the level of tennis now is so much better than when I won Wimbledon in 2013,” Bartoli told The Independent. “It might have improved a little bit, but I think I can match that.”
Bartoli, who retired just weeks after winning her only Grand Slam title, has been back in training since October and will make her first public on-court appearance on Monday at an exhibition event in New York. She plans to play her first comeback tournament at the Miami Open, which begins in just over a fortnight’s time.
“It’s been going great so far,” Bartoli said. “I’ve been enjoying the process of getting back into shape and being on the court and practising. Of course I can’t wait to be back on the court playing my first match.”
Bartoli’s original decision to retire, in August 2013, was almost as big a shock as her Wimbledon triumph the previous month, when she became the first player in the open era to win the title without facing a top 10 seed. She had been dogged by physical injuries throughout the previous year, including an Achilles problem and a shoulder injury.
On retirement Bartoli said she felt her body could no longer cope with playing tennis at the highest level. Her last match was against the world No 25, Simona Halep, who is now the world No 1. “My body, I just can’t do it any more,” Bartoli said at the time.
The intervening four and a half years have not been easy for the Frenchwoman, who has had to deal with physical and psychological issues. A relationship with a boyfriend dating back to the spring of 2014 proved particularly difficult.
“I let myself get destroyed by someone,” Bartoli recently told the French sports daily newspaper, L’Equipe. “Every day he would tell me that I was fat. Every day. He would see a thin girl on the street and tell me: ‘See how skinny and pretty she is’.”
Bartoli subsequently lost a lot of weight and contracted a virus which left her fearing for her life. Wimbledon barred her from playing in an invitation event two summers ago because of fears for her well-being. She described that day as the most difficult of her life and swore afterwards that if she returned to full health she would attempt to resume her career.
“I’m not rushing,” Bartoli says now. “I’m going to take my time. I’ll only come back when I feel completely 100 per cent. I’m not going to rush and play at half my level. That’s not necessary for me. I really want to come back and play at my best.”
She added: “Mentally it’s very important for me to go through that process because tennis was a huge part of my first life and then I stepped away from it. I feel now that it has to be there again.”
Will Wimbledon be a particular target? “Well of course I would love to do well on grass, but I would just love to do well, period,” she said.
“If it’s Wimbledon of course it would be very special because I won there, but I just want to enjoy this time back on the court. I’ve been having a lot of trouble over the last four or five years so for me just to be feeling really happy again is already a victory.”
Although Bartoli has been a regular visitor to tournaments through her television commentary work she said she had missed “the adrenalin of going out on to the centre court and playing a huge match with a lot of pressure on it because that’s what I loved the most, those pressure matches”.
She thinks that the experience of winning a Grand Slam title will stand her in good stead as she attempts to return to the top.
“I know that I can do it,” she said. “Since I retired the levels of tennis might have gone up a tiny bit, but I question even that, especially with regard to a few players. Today you don’t see anyone really dominating. Nobody outside of Serena [Williams] has been able to step up high enough so that nobody can catch them.”
Eighteen Grand Slam tournaments have been played since Bartoli’s retirement. Williams has won seven of them and Angelique Kerber and Garbine Muguruza two each, but the other seven have all been won by different players.
“Before every Grand Slam you feel there are maybe 20 players who could win the title because the standards are so even,” Bartoli said. “Who wins could be a matter of the draw, luck or something else. Before, I think the standard of the top 10 was so high that it was every hard for anyone else outside of that group to catch them. But that’s not really the case now.”
Bartoli said she had always relished training hard and has enjoyed the work she has been doing with her new coaching team. Throughout her career she was coached by her father, but he has not been involved in her comeback, though she says he has remained supportive. Instead she is working with Rodolphe Gilbert, a former top 70 player, and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga’s former fitness coach, Cyril Brechbühl.
“They’re great people,” Bartoli said. “I’ve really enjoyed working with them and I’m really looking forward to the future.”
Bartoli will begin her comeback in good company at an all-woman "Tie Break Tens" tournament in New York on Monday. Serena Williams and Venus Williams will be among the other players taking part.
Thereafter Bartoli is aiming high. She says her main goals are to win another Grand Slam title, to play in the 2020 Olympics and to help France win the Fed Cup.
“I’m going to try my hardest,” she said. “I don’t know where it’s going to take me, but that doesn’t really matter for me. That’s not the most important thing. It’s about feeling alive again.”
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