It was just over a month ago that Ons Jabeur announced to the world that she’d have to be pulling out of her favorite tournaments in the Middle East to undergo a minor knee surgery.
“My medical team have decided that I need to get a minor surgery in order to be able to be back on the courts and perform well,” she wrote. “I will have to retire from Doha and Dubai and this is breaking my heart. I would like to say sorry to all the fans out there in the middle east that waited for this reunion. I promise I will come back to you stronger and healthy.”
Jabeur is already back, and in winning ways; she battled past Magdalena Frech of Poland on Saturday night at Indian Wells, 4-6, 6-4, 6-1.
But she’s far from 100 percent. 80, in fact, is more like it.
“My knee is, I can say 80 percent,” Jabeur told reporters. “It's getting there. At least the pain is not here. I'm strengthening and getting my movements back, but still my movements are not 100 percent, for sure.”
The Tunisian didn’t want to share the details of her surgery.
“The knee is getting there,” she said. “Physically I obviously need more time. But when the time is right, I'll tell you what was going on, really. I'm sorry, I cannot talk about it right now. But it is more than that. So it was very challenging for me health-wise."
Jabeur will face Marketa Vondrousova in the third round at the BNP Paribas Open
She said she didn't want to miss too much tennis, so decided she wanted to take on the challenge
"I'm an athlete and it's tough to stay out of competition for a long time," she said. "I was missing to be on the court. You know, I just didn't want to go behind of the ranking too much. I missed already two 500s and a 1000 and there is two 1000s coming. I was like, 'Okay, I'm going to go and get prepared, even here and Miami, and see what's gonna happen. I just twisted it a little bit. I made it like a challenge for myself to see if maybe physically I'm not ready, then I can challenge my mental health or really get my brain working for once."