American Victoria Duval is making her emotional, inspiring return to the professional tennis ranks count this week.
More: Duval Announces She's Cancer-Free
Having been off the tour for more than a year to undergo chemotherapy to treat Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, the spunky 19-year-old has won her first two matches at this week's Landisville Challenger in Pennsylvania. She’ll face Great Britain’s Naomi Broady in the quarterfinals.
Duval, who received her cancer diagnosis before Wimbledon last year, elected to stay at the All England Club to play the qualifying despite the bad news. She ended up making the main draw at Wimbledon and reached all the way to the second round before falling.
She opened up about the experience in an interview with Ben Rothenberg of the New York Times. In the article Duval credits many of her peers for support, most notably Venus Williams:
Here is an excerpt from that interview:
You can read Rothenberg’s full article at the New York Time here
“I didn’t really realize how brave I was until I came home and everyone in my family and my friends, they told me that if they got told the same thing the day before they had to play a match, they wouldn’t have been able to finish, because that’s like the biggest emotional blow you can hear. To me, I was just thinking that I needed to keep winning so I didn’t go home. For me, to keep playing was easier.
“It was the first time I really thought about what I had to face when I went home, which was a terrible idea. I went on my phone, and I looked up chemotherapy, and I looked up what exactly goes into it. And I just started hysterically crying because I didn’t know if I could do this. When I went out on the court, I played that whole match crying, and it was kind of a nightmare. And then when we went to the doctor, he said all the side effects I saw online, I was like, Oh, boy, this is it.”
Duval says she’s hoping for a US Open wild card, and also told WTATennis.com that she'll play qualifying at Cincinnati and perhaps New Haven the week before the U.S. Open.
"I want to show people that sometimes you're dealt with a tough situation beyond your control, but all you can do is make the best of it,” Duval told WTAtennis.com. “An illness doesn't define me, but how I bounce back is what I hope people will remember."
Stay tune for more about Duval this summer. For now enjoy a collection of tweets in celebration of her remarkable return to professional tennis: