During this year’s Wimbledon, post-match interviews turned into televised therapy sessions, as players revealed internal turmoil.

While there is no one way to address mental health issues, according to experts, there are effective measures professional tennis players can take to manage their emotions. Carlos Alcaraz and Amanda Anisimova appear to practice those strategies.

“I’ve felt down a lot of times on the court and in tournaments. I’m just really happy to have found the right path again and such good joy on the court,” said Alcaraz in a post-match interview. “For me, it is not about winning or losing. For me it’s about having fun playing tennis, have fun stepping on court.”

Alcaraz takes a 24-match winning streak into the finals against Jannik Sinner on Sunday. Anisimova stunned No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka to reach her first Wimbledon final, where she will play Iga Swiatek.

Anisimova took eight months off from tennis to focus on her mental health. She didn’t even pick up a racket for months.

“When I took my break, a lot of people told me that you would never make it to the top again if you take so much time away from the game. And that was a little hard to digest, because I did want to come back and still achieve a lot,” said Anisimova in a post-match interview. “So just me being able to prove that, you know, you can get back to the top if you prioritize yourself. So that’s been incredibly special to me.”

Not since Naomi Osaka opted out of a press conference in 2021 has mental health been such a hot topic in tennis.

After his first-round loss, a sunken Alexander Zverev told reporters he never felt lonelier than he did out on the court and might consider therapy. When asked about Zverev’s despair, Aryna Sabalenka told the Associated Press that she was in treatment for five years.

“It’s really important to be open and to talk about what are you experiencing, because if you’re going to keep it inside, it’s just going to destroy you. I think that’s kind of like something happening to him,” Sabalenka said.

Madison Keys credits therapy with helping her win the 2025 Australian Open.

LaKeitha Poole, assistant athletic director of Sport Psychology and Counseling at LSU, said the destigmatization of therapy has changed in recent years, and more athletes are incorporating mental well-being into their overall performance preparation.

“It’s just like having your athletic trainer, your strength coach, your dietician,” said Poole. “You’re seeing people talking about therapy being a critical component of their recovery process. The stigmatization has shifted things and created safer spaces for people to be able to talk about it. And, I don’t think we’ll ever go back to when people were ashamed.”

Why Some Tennis Players Struggle With Mental Health

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“Tennis is one of the toughest sports out there due to the individual nature of it and how young the professional players are when they turn pro,” said Mark Kovacs, a human performance scientist and CEO of the Kovacs Institute. “Many of them (tennis players) are in their teens, and some of them are in their early teens, and that in itself, creates a whole other level of pressure many other sports don’t have.”

A former All-American tennis player at Auburn, Kovacs also served as senior director of sports science and health for the Cleveland Cavaliers. He understands the unique pressure tennis players face.

“It’s one of the few sports in the world where the players actually hire and fire their coaches, their trainers, their support staff at a very young age. Most team sports, you have general managers, you have coaches that make those decisions for the players,” said Kovacs. “So there’s a whole pressure that comes with being a CEO of your own company . . . And then the challenge in tennis is there’s no guaranteed contracts, so you’re having to win matches to pay your bills, so you don’t have the opportunity of having a bad week or a bad month that immediately affects your bottom line.”

In an interview with the Tennis Channel, Alex de Minaur said, unlike in a team sport, tennis players can’t count on someone to pick up the slack if they’re having an off day.

“Ultimately, you’re out there on your own, right? So you are the one responsible for your own results,” said De Minaur. “There’s no hiding, right? So you’re constantly in the spotlight, and that with the travel, the weeks, the length of schedule, I think, does have an impact on on us as players and and human beings.”

Gen Z More Comfortable Talking About Mental Health

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Poole believes one reason more tennis stars are talking about mental health is that more players are Gen Z.

“People who are part of that generation, broadly, whether they are athletes or not, they’re just much more comfortable talking about mental health,” said Poole. “They have much more of an emotional vocabulary. So, you know, I just think that they’re reframing what does it look like to be an athlete, not particularly playing tennis, but also just being able to be themselves and talk about what’s going on with them as they compete.”

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Gen Z is also part of the influencer and the attention economy, in which staying relevant means posting a version of themselves online. Self-promotion, mining for likes, leads to business deals. Yet, TikTok likes provide an artificial connection, followers, not friends.

“There is such a dire issue of loneliness and isolation,” said Weirong Li, CEO of Raw Culture, a media company focused on amplifying narratives of global citizenship to create social change. As a communications coach, Weirong, 26, works with Gen Z professionals.

“In general Gen Z, because we grew up in such an online culture, in tech heavy world, it’s very hard for us to really build deep and genuine relationships.”

Weirong said Gen Z is programmed to rely on tech but wired for human interaction. She noted a video on YouTube for Gen Z on “How do I make friends?” that has millions of views.

“It’s so heartbreaking,” she said. “Meanwhile, the longest longitudinal study from Harvard School of Development found, what’s the secret to the most successful life? The quality and depth of our closest relationships.”

Weirong said Alcaraz’s focus on enjoying himself, friendships, and family keeps him grounded.

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“When the athletes go back home they’re not that superstar, they’re just normal humans. And so it gives them a sense of kind of bringing them down (to earth), decreasing the stress,” Weirong said. “And so just having people who just like, feel like family, are family, comfortable about who you really are, definitely helps you with the anxiety of feeling like you have to behave a certain way.”

Whether it’s Coco Gauff joking about her younger brothers, Ben Shelton lobbying for his sister to get a day off, Djokovic showcasing his daughter’s silly dance, or Anisimova bringing her nephew onto the court after a win, human connections foster emotional well-being.

Performance Anxiety Versus Clinical Mental Health

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Players who are working on staying focused during big moments are fighting a different beast than someone who is battling clinical depression. Unfortunately, sometimes people conflate the two, and that’s a mistake, says Kovacs.

“A lot of coaches would have the expertise to deal with some of the mental health challenges and create the right environment,” said Kovacs. “The challenge is, just like with coaches, physical trainers, there’s a whole level of expertise that varies in the mental health and sports psychology world.”

Jack Draper, who struggled with match performance anxiety, hired a breathing coach. Daria Abramowicz, a sports psychologist, is an integral part of Iga Swiatek’s team.

“You’ve got to be careful, especially with mental health, just like with physical health, if you work with someone who uses the wrong exercises, the wrong techniques, the wrong strategies, you can actually make a moderate problem to a major problem,” said Kovacs. “It’s like bringing a plumber in to fix an electrical problem. They (the plumber) are highly qualified, but not in that.”

Finding Purpose Beyond The Baseline

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In 2019, Anisimova was a rising teen sensation when, just days before the U.S. Open, her father, also her coach, died of a heart attack. Anisimova struggled and finally decided to address her mental health in 2023.

“I learned a lot about myself, my interests off the court and just taking some time to breathe and live a normal life for a bit,” said Anisimova.

Alcaraz and Anisimova found purpose and meaning outside of tennis, key for an athlete’s mental health.

“Some of them are playing for something, where some of them are playing as someone,” said Poole. “And so if they’re able to anchor their purpose to something bigger, like being a happy warrior or their family, cultural representation, or their personal values, whatever it is, those things we know, research wise, sustain motivation and help support long term mental wellness.”