By: Sandy Wang

To Jennifer Brady, there was no such thing as success without pain.

Before she got injured, Brady reached the semifinals of the 2020 U.S. Open and qualified for the finals for the Australian Open four months later, which put her on the brink of top 10 for singles rankings.

Before competing in the Australian Open, though, she had to quarantine in a hotel for two weeks. To help practice for the upcoming tournament, Brady used a mattress propped against the wall as the opponent, whacking it with tennis balls.

However, a chronic foot condition and knee injury would prevent her from competing for two years.

Originally, Brady’s goal was to compete in the French Open in May of 2023. However, just before she left for the plane, a new injury, a bone bruise in her right foot, prevented her from doing so.

Two years before her injury, in late 2019, Brady began training with Michael Geserer, a German coach, whose training method was highly intense.

Following her plan with Geserer, she went to a tournament in Doha, Qatar, in February 2021. “I just didn’t want to be there,” she said, after losing to Naomi Osaka twice in the U.S. Open and Australian Open. “I love competing, but I just didn’t want to compete. Mentally, I was absolutely fried.”

In March as Brady prepared for the Miami Open, she said that she woke up in the “middle of the night with a sharp, stabbing pain” in her left foot.

She was diagnosed with plantar fasciitis but refused to stop competing. But by May, after she played in the Italian Open, she woke up and “couldn’t walk.”

Brady had to receive a cortisone injection and a platelet-rich plasma injection in her left foot and even then, she lost at the Tokyo Olympics. She decided to return to the U.S. to get ready for the 2021 U.S. Open in August.

During the Western and Southern Open, she got a new stress fracture in her right knee and she also had a partial tear in her left plantar fascia. Even though she had knee surgery in March 2022 the foot pain still lingered around.

Even with the $4.6 million of accumulated prize money from tennis tournaments, Brady’s medical bills have only been stacking up in the two-year break.

But now, finally healed, Brady can start doing her job.

Link to Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/29/sports/tennis/jennifer-brady-citi-open.html