"I started to suffer and came back miserable": Garbine Muguruza explains decision to take tennis break and eventually retire

For most of her career, Garbine Muguruza lived inside the eye of a storm. A two-time Grand Slam champion, former world No. 1 and WTA Finals winner, she built her success on relentless focus and an uncompromising demand for perfection. But when the noise finally subsided, she realised that the same intensity that made her a champion was also keeping her from living.

“Tennis was everything,” Muguruza recalls in an extended interview on Tennis Insider Club. “If I lost a big match, I was depressed for a little bit. I’d go home alone in Switzerland, my parents in Spain, and it was tough. My self-esteem depended on how good I was.”

She laughs gently now at the memory, but the feeling was real: wake up thinking tennis, eat thinking tennis, sleep thinking tennis. When the results stopped coming, so did her sense of self. “What once helped me achieve success became kryptonite,” she says. “I felt I couldn’t keep that level of intensity. Mentally, emotionally, the capacity to suffer.”

After the high of winning Roland-Garros in 2016 and Wimbledon the following year, Muguruza struggled to sustain her dominance. She slipped from the top five, then the top 20. “I was still a good player, but not where I felt I deserved to be,” she says. “I had a lot of pride. I’d think, ‘Do I have to change something? Why isn’t this working anymore?’”

Change eventually came, but not easily. She overhauled her team, rebuilt her confidence, and climbed again culminating in the 2021 WTA Finals title in Guadalajara. Yet even that triumph carried an unexpected emotion. “After winning the Finals, I felt relief,” she admits. “That was new. You’re supposed to feel joy, but I was exhausted. I knew preseason was coming, Australia, the pressure again. I started to suffer even though I’d just won one of the biggest titles.”

That fatigue became impossible to ignore. “I thought I just needed two weeks,” she says. “But I felt guilty for stopping, came back miserable, then finally took a real break.”

The pause stretched on, and with it came perspective. For the first time, Muguruza began to discover a personal life beyond the court. “Before, I didn’t really have one,” she admits. “Once I did, it opened my mind.”

When the question of retirement inevitably came, she faced it with clarity. “People said, ‘You’re so young, why stop?’ But I wasn’t injured; I just wanted to start a new chapter — build a family, live life. I felt my life was just starting. Once I decided, it felt great. Like freedom.”

Does she ever think about returning? “People ask me that a lot,” Muguruza says with a smile. “But I didn’t have the gasoline anymore. For me, being top five required everything, total commitment, even in an unhealthy way. When I realised I wasn’t willing to give everything anymore, that was my answer.”

After all, once you’ve been No. 1, settling isn’t in the DNA. “I tried to be more relaxed and balanced, friendly, social, calm but it didn’t work. For me it was all or nothing.”

Today, Muguruza is back in tennis from a different angle — as tournament director of the WTA Finals, the event that marked both a peak and an ending. “I never thought the opportunity would come so fast,” she says. “I love using my experience to understand what players want. Now I see how much work goes on behind the scenes! As a player, you have no idea.”

She walks through player lounges, joins practice courts, chats freely — a familiar face in a new role. “I’m not too corporate,” she laughs. “They can talk to me, ask questions. I go to practices, talk a bit of tennis. I enjoy that a lot.”

If she could speak to her younger self, Muguruza knows exactly what she’d say. “Hang in there,” she answers without hesitation. “I used to take everything as life or death. I’d tell myself to hang in there, because everything passes. Today’s big deal is forgotten tomorrow.”

That sense of calm something she once thought was weakness has become her greatest victory. “Knowing when to stop is also important,” she says. “That intensity built my character and resilience, but freedom is learning to let go.”