Leylah Fernandez says a trying season of injuries and losses has tested her mental fortitude.
She expects to come through it as the tennis calendar shifts to the hard courts.
"This season has been a lot more downs than ups,” Fernandez said. “I'm just happy that I have the right team around me, the right people around me to bring me back down to earth, not think of the worst-possible situation.
“I actually feel a lot better now that I'm back home, started training, took a couple of days off, and just feeling physically ready, mentally prepared.”
Fernandez, ranked 25th in the world, has won five career WTA titles — all on hard courts — but is 12-19 in singles this season following a 1-4 run on grass, including last month’s first-round exit at Wimbledon.
The 23-year-old from Laval, Que., said she dealt with “a couple of physical problems” earlier this season and struggled to recover once the losses began piling up.
“That played into the confidence in my game when wins weren't coming in,” she said in an interview from Miami on Thursday. “I guess there's just a domino effect from the beginning to now. But again, I've gone through some tough moments in my career and I've always come out on top at the end.”
Fernandez preferred to keep her physical issues a secret for now, saying only that it could make for “an interesting story” once she’s ready to share details.
The five-foot-six lefty was working through a similar slump last year when she suddenly opened the hard-court season with a D.C. Open victory, rattling off wins over women’s stars Jessica Pegula and Elena Rybakina en route to the biggest title of her career.
Fernandez was scheduled to fly to Washington on Friday to defend her title at the WTA 500 event before entering the National Bank Open, which runs Aug. 1-13 in Toronto.
She said she’s in a good headspace following a brief post-Wimbledon reset that included reflecting on why she fell in love with tennis in the first place.
"I try to come back to the very basics of things, like why I started playing tennis, if this is still something that I want to do,” she said. “I would try to ask myself these questions and of course at the end of the day it's always like, I love playing tennis because I always want to improve myself, I love the competition that comes with it.”
Fernandez has also thought about where she stands in her career. She has been in the Canadian tennis spotlight since her run to the 2021 U.S. Open final, but at still only 23, she swings between believing she has plenty of time and feeling pressure to reach her goals.
"It's weird because a lot of people say I have a lot of time, and for the longest time I've been thinking, ‘Well, not really,’ because a career kind of ends in between 10 to 15 years, depending on what age you start,” she said. “And some people would say, you don't have time. And I'm like, 'Well actually, maybe I do because a season is long.'
“It's kind of a push and pull.”
Fernandez still has goals of cracking the WTA’s top 10 — she reached a career-high No. 13 in August 2022 — and winning her first Grand Slam.
Any time she’s felt things start to slip away, she’s leaned on her entourage, which includes her dad and coach Jorge Fernandez, to help her stay positive.
“Especially this year when I was thinking, ‘No, I don't got time, I gotta do better, I gotta win matches.’ The team with me that's travelling was saying, 'Hey, slow your roll. Results will come, just focus on the process,’” she said. “Hopefully soon, the wins are gonna come.”
Fernandez has also found support in Vincent Boily, her boyfriend and a para hockey player who represented Canada at the Milan Cortina Paralympics. The two began dating last year after Boily watched Fernandez, on a short turnaround from the D.C. Open, crash out of the National Bank Open’s first round in Montreal.
“Very unfortunate that he saw one of my worst matches,” Fernandez said with a laugh. “But it was kind of funny because a couple of days later, he messaged and was like, ‘Hey, before you leave I'd love to see you for a coffee or something.’
“He seemed like a very interesting person, and from that breakfast that we had till now we've always kept in contact. He's a very sweet guy, he's funny. He makes me laugh and also puts things into perspective for myself and my results so far.”
