Women's tennis rebels against the clock: "I shouldn't have to stop playing because I want to be a mother"

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Professional women's tennis has been discussing rankings, injuries, titles, and careers for decades. Much less about what happens when a player starts to wonder how much time she has left to become a mother. However, motherhood in professional tennis, fertility, and egg freezing have started entering a conversation that remained silent for too long. Not because all tennis players want to be mothers, but because more players are claiming the ability to choose when and how they want to face their future.

The conversation actually started in a Wimbledon locker room. In 2024, Magda Linette sought out Sloane Stephens. Not to talk about a rival, a surface, or how to approach a match. The Polish player, then 32 years old, wanted to ask about something much more personal: fertility. Linette knew that a genetic condition could make in vitro fertilization her best option if she ever wanted to be a mother, but she had doubts about the treatment, its physical impact, her career, and even the possibility that the medications could cause issues in an anti-doping test.

Stephens knew exactly what she was talking about. She had frozen her eggs herself and had been publicly sharing her experience for some time. Her response was simple but carried the essence of a revolution that is just beginning.

The Clock That Never Shows on the Scoreboard

For years, a tennis player could spend a lifetime hearing about her age. Too young to win. Too old to start. In her prime. At the end of her career. But there was another clock that almost no one talked about: the biological one. The WTA has begun to acknowledge that this clock is also part of the reality for its players. The new maternity program offers financial assistance for in vitro fertilization and egg freezing treatments to over 320 tennis players, but it also includes a year of paid maternity leave and ranking protection in certain processes related to fertility.

This measure is not merely symbolic. A single cycle of egg freezing can cost between $10,000 and $25,000. For a circuit star, it may be a significant but achievable investment. For a player trying to make her way outside the top ranks, it can be outright unattainable. Desirae Krawczyk, for example, received $20,000 to undergo her treatment. And she left a statement that encapsulates the fear many women face when making this decision: “You don't want to look back and think: 'I should have done it'.

There is something particularly significant about this conversation starting within the locker room. Tennis is an individual sport. Players can share training, travels, and confidences, but also face each other hours later for a title. Nonetheless, information has begun to circulate. Sloane Stephens has become a reference point for many of her colleagues. Beatriz Haddad Maia turned to her before undergoing treatment. Other players asked her about injections, doctors, symptoms, and recovery. Privacy, in this case, has found a place within the competition.

“It is tough to entrust your most personal matters to someone on Monday and compete against her on Tuesday,” Linette acknowledged, but perhaps that is precisely why this conversation holds so much value. Because players are discovering that there are decisions that cannot be solely approached from a performance logic. Linette needed about five weeks to feel ready again after the egg retrieval. The process was more painful than she had expected.

“I have developed an entirely new admiration for women who go through those cycles over and over,” she acknowledged. It is not a minor statement coming from an athlete accustomed to competing with pain. A tennis player's body is designed, in a way, to endure. To withstand and continue. But fertility treatments pose a different kind of challenge, one where not everything can be controlled. Even anti-doping comes into the equation.

Linette even questioned if some medications and supplements necessary for the process could jeopardize her career. In her own words, she found herself facing a huge dilemma. And therein lies the paradox: professional sports require players to control their bodies to the smallest detail, but fertility reminds them that there are decisions that cannot be indefinitely postponed.

Serena Opened a Door, Now Others Aim to Cross It

Serena Williams forever changed the conversation about motherhood in tennis when she returned to competition after becoming a mother. She demonstrated that a player could return to the elite and compete for the most important titles in the world. But the new revolution begins earlier.

The question now is not only if a tennis player can come back after having a child. It is also if she can continue competing during her best years, preserve a future option, and delay a decision that once seemed immediately mandatory. Maria Sharapova chose to wait before retiring. “As I progressed in tennis, I knew it wouldn't be realistic to be a young mother,” she explained. For a long time, it seemed like there were only two paths: to wait or to give up. Now, a third path is beginning to emerge.

It is not a guarantee. Freezing eggs does not ensure future motherhood. Science also cannot eliminate uncertainty. But it can offer something that the tennis calendar had never granted: time. And perhaps that is the true revolution of the WTA. Not that all players want to be mothers, not that all need to freeze their eggs, but that they can come to a decision without feeling that rankings, schedules, and biological clocks have decided for them. For decades, women's tennis asked its players to choose. Now, finally, it is beginning to understand that true freedom lies in not having to do so.

This news is an automatic translation. You can read the original news, El tenis femenino se rebela contra el reloj: “No tendría que dejar de jugar porque quiera ser madre”