Jennifer Brady: Returning after injury nightmare an indescribable feeling – Players’ Voice

I’m back at the US Open, ready to play the tournament for the first time in three years following a very tough period of injuries.

Whenever I get to New York, food is always my priority. The first thing I do is find good food, usually going to some good Korean food spots. Going to K-town or West Village, I like that area a lot and then getting some good steaks. So Korean food and steaks, for me is pretty much the go-to whenever I’m in Manhattan.

I’ve been on-site at the tennis the last few days and I got to practise on Arthur Ashe stadium. It was my first time on Ashe in three years and I was really excited just to be on that court hitting; it was really cool to experience that again.

Of course, it was emotional stepping back on that court but they were good emotions because the last match I played there was the semi-final against Naomi Osaka and, to me, that was probably one of the best matches that I’ve ever played, even though I lost. Within the first five minutes of my hit on Ashe this week, I was already smiling pretty big and happy to just to be out there and hitting again.

What I remember from that semi-final against Naomi is that it was such a high-quality match, from the very first point all the way to the end. Both of us were in the zone, dialled in, and it was just really high-quality tennis. I was moving well, playing well, feeling the ball. Just really enjoying it. It was 2020, so it was unfortunate that we had no fans in the stadium, but I hope I get the chance to come out and play on Ashe again this year, and hopefully many more times. It will probably be more emotional, having fans there and playing in front of a crowd and a little bit more nerves, but I think looking back, that match was probably one of the best matches either one of us has ever played.

Foot and knee injuries kept me out of action for two years, and now that I’ve returned to the tour, it’s hard not to keep going back and thinking, ‘Oh, I’m not doing this, I’m not hitting my forehand the way I used to, I’m not serving the way I used to, I’m not moving the way I used to’, and it’s hard mentally to just keep looking back and comparing where I’m at now to where I was three years ago playing this tournament. It’s not really fair for me to compare myself to three years ago, whether I’m healthy or not; I think the older you get, you’re not as fast or as strong as you used to be. Things change and the body has to adapt; things are different now and I can’t really keep saying, I made the finals of Grand Slam, I made the semis of a Grand Slam. From here on out, it’s about just looking forward and what can I do to get better every day.

The two years I spent on the sidelines were really s*****.

The tennis world is like a little bubble. We go from week to week and as soon as you lose, you’re out of the tournament and you book a flight for the next day. You’re off to the next event and you’re just in this cycle of doing the same thing over and over and not really taking a step back or just looking from the outside and being like, ‘Wow, the life that we live is unbelievable’. We have so much opportunity to do so much, and we’re so lucky to be doing what we’re doing and travelling the world; there are so many different people from all different countries that play this sport. We’re all in one place at the same time and then we go to the next one and the next one. So I think a lot of us lose a bit of perspective when we are playing on tour. Some of us complain about things that really are not that big of a deal and things we should probably not be complaining about. Because things are a lot tougher in the real world. I want no part of the real world. We have flexibility in our work life, we make our own schedules and we’re in charge. There are a lot of things that we can control. We’re our own boss and we’re extremely privileged to be doing what we’re doing.

The reason I say it was really s***** while I was away was because tennis is my life, and I think just because we get the chance to do what we do, week in, week out, I think we take it for granted. At any moment, it could just get taken away from you. You never know what your last tournament or match could be. So I think it is about just looking forward and trying to find that perspective when things are getting tough or things aren’t going the way that I would like them to and using that as a learning moment.

I love tennis, I love everything about it, and I love competing, and there’s nothing that can replicate the emotion and the adrenaline of just stepping on centre court and competing and playing tennis; it’s just an indescribable feeling.

During the time I was injured, my mind wandered a lot towards what my life would look like without tennis in it. There were a lot of 3:00am wake-ups in the middle of the night, freaking out just because the unknown is so scary. Not knowing when I would be able to play again, when I would just be able to train at a level where I could get fit to try to compete. There were a lot of moments of thinking that.

It was just this constant loop of trying to ramp up to get to a point where I can train at a higher intensity for like a week and then try to build on that and then increase time on court. I never got to the point where I was playing a full week. I’d play for one or two days and then I would have a flare up and then I’d have to take three days off. So it was always just up and down. It was like two days on, one day off, or two weeks on, two weeks off. There was never a case of, ‘Hey, Jenny, this isn’t working, just take six months off, don’t even think about your injury. Don’t do anything, just go live life, explore whatever and then come back and do it right’. There were times where I was thinking, should I go back to UCLA? Should I take classes? Then I was like, but what if I’m going to be playing at the French Open? I can’t take classes and play in a Grand Slam at the same time. Between all the unknown and the uncertainty, it was just a really crappy process.

If somebody had told me, ‘You’re going to be out for two full years, go do whatever’, I would have done something: get a job, go back to school, do all of it. I just felt like my life had no purpose because I was just playing a waiting game. I didn’t want to have any regrets. If I had gone, ‘this isn’t working, maybe I’ll just go back to school’, I would also end up feeling, what if? You just can’t really live your life like that. You have to commit and just trust the process.

So it was a really rough time in that sense. Just not knowing what the future holds, and honestly having no sense of purpose with life. There was not much that I could do physically, so just trying to find things to kill time to make the days go by. It’s kind of sad now that I talk about it.

Someone once told me, ‘Tennis is a part of who you are but don’t let tennis define you’. I think that’s what a lot of us do, and I definitely do that; my identity is so intertwined with the sport. I just felt like I didn’t really know what to do. People have asked me, ‘Oh, what did you do with your time off?’ I was like, ‘Honestly, I don’t really know’. I just wanted to play tennis. It is who I am. It is my identity. I am Jenny Brady, but I’m also Jenny Brady the tennis player because I guess it’s all we know. Having it instilled in you from such a young age and every single day practising just to be a professional athlete – obviously, you have to have discipline and be strict with your training and all that stuff. But I think there’s also room for enjoying life and not just only focusing on tennis, which I think a lot of us tennis players do because it’s such an individual sport. So there’s no real escape.

When I had knee surgery in March 2022, my intention was to get back on court six weeks later. That obviously did not happen, and it was a lot more complicated than that. It was very tricky just because it was two injuries; it wasn’t just one thing that I was focused on.

Also, the longer you’re out, the longer it takes to come back because I got to a point where I lost all my muscle mass. I probably lost 10 pounds. You’re so out of shape, maybe not looks-wise, but you’d be on the tennis court and 10 minutes in, you’re dying. You have to rebuild all of your muscle conditioning. But also, I can’t go and run laps or do sprints because I have to be mindful of the injuries that I’ve had.

Even just looking forward, I probably won’t spend a lot of time doing much running. I’ll save all the impact for on the tennis court because I just want to maximise that as much as I can. There are some things that I would like to be doing training-wise, but I just might never be able to do again, which is fine as long as I know I can play and compete. So there are things that you have to adapt to and just be really smart about.

One of the people I reached out to during the process for advice was Daria Gavrilova. I was talking with her on and off over the last year-and-a-half, maybe. She’s had crazy injuries, ACL, her Achilles, all that stuff, and I was just asking her, ‘What the hell, how do I know when I’m going to be able to play? How do I know?’ This was around the French Open this year because I was planning on going and then I tweaked something that wasn’t a part of the injuries that I had and I was like, ‘Am I ever going to play again?’ I was trying to get her opinion on it. She gave me advice and said, ‘You’ll know when you’re ready. You don’t need a physio or a coach or a trainer or to pass some test in the gym in your rehab to tell you that you’re ready to play again. You’ll know deep down inside’.

It was funny because maybe two weeks or a week before Granby, the 100k tournament that I started my comeback at, I was practising and I had a couple of good weeks, and then one day I was like, ‘Holy s***, I’m ready’. I was like, ‘Wow, this is what Dasha was talking about’. So it was that gut feeling of, ‘I’m ready to go, I’m ready to compete, I can play one match and come up the next day and trust my body to play again’. So I think that was really, really helpful.

A bunch of people, honestly, were reaching out to me, and I shut a lot of people out just because I was dealing with it for so long and I almost felt like a bit of a failure because people would be like, ‘Wow, how is it still painful?’ I was just like, ‘I don’t know, I don’t have the answers. If I had the answers, do you really think I would still be in this position?’

Looking back, I definitely think that overtraining plays a big part in many of the injuries we see on tour. Tennis is so physical. The amount that we train is probably not necessary. I think the older you get, the less you do, and then you realise, well, I guess I really didn’t need to practise twice a day and do two gym sessions. You may not feel it when you’re 16, 17, 18 up until your early 20s. But once your mid-20s hits, you just start to feel it. You wake up and you’re like, ‘Wow, what’s that pain? I’ve never had that before’. So it takes a toll on your body, and I think training smart is way better than just training and putting in so many hours. I’d rather put super high intensity with a shorter amount of time, and that’s how I’m going to be training now moving forward. No more three-hour practice sessions for me; a two-hour practice is the most I’ll go on court and that’ll be it for me. Maybe every now and then doing two sessions, but it’s more about trying to maximise and create some more longevity instead of just burning out and trying to do too much.

In terms of my injuries, I think that there’s always going to be pain, but it’s different now. I think in general, your body at this level, I don’t think there’s ever going to be a day where you’re pain-free from anything. I think at this point, it’s just about managing. If I wake up and say, ‘Wow, today’s really bad’ then I’ll have a light day or even take a day off. Sometimes we freak out if we don’t practise every single day, and I don’t think we’re going to forget how to hit a tennis ball. I didn’t play for two years and I’m actually feeling pretty decent, tennis-wise. There’s a ton I need to get better at and improve and get some confidence and get matches under my belt and little things with my game, but we don’t forget how to hit a tennis ball.

Pain-wise, I’m able to go out there and compete and not worry about how I’m going to feel the next day. So that’s good enough for me.

Tennis is very unique in the sense of how quickly things change; it’s a grind. You never know when your last match is. I think just competing and enjoying every single time I step on court is going to be how I look at things.

It’s extremely encouraging to see players like Marketa Vondrousova and Karolina Muchova come back from difficult injuries and do so well at the Grand Slams. Especially that they’re players that I’ve played in the past. It’s tough to compare yourself, but at the same time, you have to in some sense compare a little bit. But it is really reassuring, and it’s unbelievable seeing both of them having amazing results.

I think it fuels me a bit more, and hopefully this time next year I’ll be having good results too.