13 months ago, Casey Dellacqua took a hard fall, hit her head on the court and suffered a concussion at the China Open in Beijing. Since then, Dellacqua has endured lots of hardship that started when she was forced to withdraw from her coveted spot at the WTA Finals. Concussions don’t only happen in contact sports and the Aussie is living proof. And, unfortunately, post-concussion symptoms can linger for quite some time, which explains why Dellacqua has missed so much tennis in 2016.
Read the Full Interview with Dellacqua at Tennis.Com.Au
But there is good news, and hopefully there will be a happy ending.
Dellacqua, a former world No. 26 in singles and a world No. 3 in doubles, is getting closer to coming back to tennis. After months of dizziness and headaches the Aussie made a brief return for Fed Cup in February, but she didn’t feel quite right and was pushed to the sidelines after a few months of playing mostly doubles tournaments on tour in early spring.
“I’ve had moments where I’ve felt really angry about what happened,” Dellacqua told Matt Trollope of Tennis Australia in an interview. “Because I would say I was kind of at the peak of my career – the last two or three years I’ve been playing really good tennis and been at some really good rankings. So I’ve been going through a whole lot of different emotions.”
Though the season is nearly over, Dellacqua is planning to make a comeback by November and the 31-year-old hopes to be ready for a full-time run, at least on the doubles circuit, in 2017.
“The physical symptoms have pretty much gone now,” she told Trollope. “No more headaches, my neck’s improved, I’m feeling physically great … I think a lot of it now is mental, just making sure that I’m mentally ready – so much of tennis is mental. It’s not that I’ve got a fear of falling again – it’s just knowing that when I go back out there I’m ready to compete at the highest level. I’m in a good place now where I’ve just accepted what happened.”
She added: “I have the confidence in myself as a doubles player that I’ve had so much success from early on to when the concussion happened that I hope it won’t take me long to get back to that position. Singles will be pretty tough for me, to be honest. I’m not entirely sure where my singles is headed. But doubles is certainly something that’s still on my radar … I can do well if all goes to plan.”