Plenty of players on the WTA Tour have taken time out in recent months, with a number of high-profile players ending their 2025 early.
Daria Kasatkina ended her campaign in October, with injury curtailing 2025 for Paula Badosa prior to her announcement.
Elina Svitolina also decided to take a break, and having been a world number three previously, fatigue and needing to prioritise life away from tennis isn’t exclusive to players lower down the rankings.
Now, with 2025 drawing to a close, some questions are being asked of players and when they might return – if, of course, they plan to do so.
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Ons Jabeur addresses claims she’s retiring from tennis
After losing at Wimbledon, Jabeur announced she was taking a break from tennis, and she’s not been in action since the summer.
That has led to some speculation that she might not return, with the Tunisian performer now down at number 78 in the WTA world rankings.
Jabuer has now rubbished any talk of retirement and claims she wants to return to tennis in the New Year.
She told The National News: ““My life since I was six years old was always focused on my training, my tournaments, tennis, and I didn’t feel like I, even though I did things outside tennis, it was always either tennis related or if I want to go on vacation, you always need to count the days because you don’t want to miss training. You want to go back on time.
“I wasn’t ever free from tennis. Trying to find something that makes me happy outside of tennis was difficult, and given the very tough two years that I had, it wasn’t easy.
“The happy place, the place where I find my joy, suddenly became my sadness and basically became the place that gave me depression. And I was kind of scared, and I was thinking like, ‘What if I never find joy on the tennis court ever again?’
“But I don’t think that will be the case. And I’m not retiring like most people think, I’ll be coming back someday.”
WTA need to look at the schedule once again
Not only is the schedule alarmingly busy, but players on the WTA Tour get point penalties if they don’t play in a required number of tournaments.
Given the number of players who have chosen to take a sabbatical from the tour this year, there seems to be a sense of inevitability about where things are heading.
Naturally, fans want to come out and see the very best players each week but, every player has a breaking point and more have decided to call things quits early this year.
Jabeur is one of those, but it does at least feel positive that she’s going to start playing tennis again in the near future.
The three occasions Ons Jabeur nearly became Grand Slam champion
It’s been a case of so near yet so far away for Jabeur when it comes to Grand Slams, with the player losing in finals at Wimbledon and the US Open.
The two finals at the All England Club came in 2022 and 2023, with Jabeur losing to Elena Rybakina and Marketa Vondrousova in successive years.
During that period, she sat as the second-best player in the world on the WTA Tour, and she might look back with a tinge of sadness that she couldn’t get over the line in one of them.
Iga Swiatek defeated Jabeur in the 2022 final at Flushing Meadows.
It will be great to see Jabeur back in action and having been at the top of the game previously, it will be interesting to see what she can achieve when she returns.
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