Kevin Anderson opens up about challenging times for our sport

Former world no. 5 Kevin Anderson has been ranked outside the top-15 since August 2018, struggling with injuries and failing to reach the previous level that led him towards a Major final.

A long-time member of the ATP Council is aware of all the problems gathered over the players in the last 12 months. The South African is hoping that everything will get back to normal soon, looking forward to the coronavirus vaccine and confirmed ATP calendar without delays or canceled events.

"The biggest challenge is to navigate the virus, and trying to put as much tennis on the calendar as possible is going to be. We only have a calendar through Miami, and it's a big waiting game. Some tournaments had to cancel, most notably Indian Wells; they're potentially trying to postpone it, and who knows when or how that's even possible. So that's going to be the biggest challenge, but there are other things to work on. There is new ATP management, and they are trying to put in different plans and working towards their version of improvements and changes they want to make to the sport, so I guess that's going on in the background.

I think the situation affects some people more than others. From my standpoint, the biggest one was that it was challenging to travel with my family. There's quite a big difference not playing with fans. It was nice, the few tournaments that were allowed some fans. From what I'm understanding, Australia will have a good number of fans, so I think everybody will be looking forward to that. The most stressful thing about the virus is that a lot of this is out of your control. And if you do test positive, you're going to be quarantined, you're not going to be able to play, and no matter how safe you are yourself, there's always a little bit of that unknown element.

So that part's a little bit tough to deal with, especially, we're not in a contained bubble the whole time we are traveling. Many of these tournaments are playing, and they're doing a good job with many safety protocols. Still, it's by no means a complete and isolated bubble, which is very hard to pull off logistically. We briefly, in our last call, spoke about vaccines. I feel like it wasn't very long ago all these things were approved. Initially, it isn't easy to even get them. Initially, there was talk about if you do have a vaccine, you don't have to be subject to the testing protocols that the ATP has in place.

But then there was something discussed that even if you get the vaccine, you could potentially still spread the virus. So I think there are still a lot of questions to be decided, and we still need to get more information before we start deciding what potentially is mandated within the Tour. I feel like we've come up short when it comes to the topic of mental health and offering services to players.

We have introduced a couple of things; players can talk to doctors, and we've got access to Headspace and Sporting Chance. But I feel like just in general, if you look at, for instance, the ATP physio department, we've got a whole bunch of people, whereas I think the mental health provision severely sort of lags behind that. That is something that I think is important, and I think we should increase the budget for and giving players that that support," Kevin Anderson said.