“I was trying to will my way back to the tennis court, and my dad was saying, `No. Don’t do that." - Fernandez on her eagerness to return to tennis

Leylah Fernandez will make her return to the tennis courts in Toronto this week and she explained how eager she was to return.

It was a very long recovery time for Fernandez but it felt even longer because she was literally told to stay away from tennis. A stress fracture in her ankle meant she needed to have her leg immobilized which prevented her from doing any kind of tennis activity.

Speaking about it ahead of the Masters event in Toronto, Fernandez admitted that her father told her off because of her eagerness to return:

“I was trying to will my way back to the tennis court, and my dad was saying, `No. Don’t do that. I accepted that this was going to take a while -- that I just needed to hang up my racquets for a little bit, hide them in the closet, try not to look at them. It was one of those moments that I had to master.”

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Fernandez got the all-clear from the doctor to return and it was a very big relief for her. The court missed her and she missed the court dearly:

“I am feeling great, feeling happy that I’m back on court. The foot is great. It feels like a brand new foot. We’ve just been trying to accept the situation and I think we’ve been doing a great job in understanding that this is a bad moment. But at least we’re spending this bad moment as a family and seeing it as kind of a silver lining.”

The goal is to get better and better and understand it's going to be a process. For now, it's about having fun:

“I think I’m just going to try and enjoy my time on court and, secondly, see how I feel physically and mentally. Because practicing I’m feeling great, but a tennis match is a whole new world. Hopefully, everything goes well. We can just get better tournament by tournament. Hopefully, by the US Open, I’ll be ready. But that’s in a long, long time.”

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