"I'm trying to be in the present" - Jasmine Paolini on facing new challenges following her breakout 2024 season
WTA
Italian tennis player Jasmine Paolini had the best year of her career during the 2024 season, but the WTA star knows replicating her success in 2025 will be a difficult task.
The 28-year old enjoyed a remarkable 2024 season, winning the biggest title of her career in Dubai. Subsequently, she would finish runner-up at both Roland Garros and Wimbledon, reaching back-to-back Grand Slam finals. Paolini would end the year ranked World No.4, after winning doubles gold at the Olympics and leading Italy to Billie Jean King Cup glory in November.
Surpassing 2024's success will be a tall task, admits Paolini
"I didn't think too much about the last year," Paolini told WTA Insider. "I'm trying to be in the present. We have to try to improve, to keep at this level to still play well on court. This is the goal.
"You cannot do the same result. It's going to be for sure a different year, but this is for everybody. I don't want to compare the last year with the next one. It will be a different year with different challenges. We will see what is going to happen.
"You cannot do the same result. It's going to be for sure a different year, but this is for everybody. I don't want to compare the last year with the next one. It will be a different year with different challenges. We will see what is going to happen.
The Italian ended her 2024 season by qualifying for her first WTA Finals event. As the 2025 season kicks off with a United Cup appearance, Paolini believes her biggest concern will be her health and managing her schedule.
"We know that now with the calendar like that, if you play WTA Finals and Billie Jean King Cup, it is tough to have many weeks for practice," Paolini said. "But for the next year, one goal is to try to prepare better the calendar. To try to have some weeks where we can practice a little bit more than this year, because this year I didn't practice at all.
"Believe me, last year it wasn't easy physically. I just kept playing. Sometimes I was not that healthy but I was just trying to focus on the matches and everything was going well so we tried to keep going.
"But I think after a while you need to rest physically because you need to be 100 percent. To perform well you have to be healthy, so that's the main goal. The goal for this year is to be as healthy as possible."
"Believe me, last year it wasn't easy physically. I just kept playing. Sometimes I was not that healthy but I was just trying to focus on the matches and everything was going well so we tried to keep going.
"But I think after a while you need to rest physically because you need to be 100 percent. To perform well you have to be healthy, so that's the main goal. The goal for this year is to be as healthy as possible."
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Growing up in a household where soccer was king, my earliest memories are filled with chants from packed stadiums and the rhythm of a ball being passed across neighborhood streets. But somewhere along the way, the quiet elegance and raw emotion of tennis pulled me in. What began as a curiosity became a lifelong passion; not just for the sport itself, but for the stories it tells: of grit, of heartbreak, of improbable comebacks and human resilience.
As a tennis writer, I bring the observational lens of someone who didn’t grow up in the sport, but fell in love with it as an outsider; a perspective that lets me see both its technical beauty and its emotional depth. Over the years working with TennisUpToDate, I’ve had the privilege of reaching more than 3.5 million readers worldwide, with one of my features ranking among the site’s top three articles.
With a background in storytelling and a creative mind always searching for meaning beyond the scoreboard, I aim to craft narratives that go deeper than results and rankings. Whether it’s a rising star breaking through or a veteran fighting off Father Time, I try to capture the heartbeat behind the headlines.
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