Ajla back chasing her dream after surgery
AJLA Tomljanovic is making up for lost time.
With her health and Australian passport, the Croatianborn Australian is steeled. It hasn’t been easy. Forced to sleep sitting up for almost two months following shoulder surgery, she had another 12 months on the comeback trail. A career-high ranking in the top 50 was the reward last year and Tomljanovic wants more.
“There’s things feel like I can really still improve on and I had a good year, but I still feel like there’s so much I can still do,” Tomljanovic told News Corp.
“In the last part of the season, I started feeling way more confident and playing the bigger players and going out there and believing I can win.
“In the past, maybe that wasn’t the case, because you build your confidence off of wins. I just didn’t have them for a long time.”
The 25-year-old is ranked 46th and she acknowledges: “I’m not one of those players that can just go and win a tournament out of nowhere.”
Now Australia’s thirdranked female – behind Ash Barty and Daria Gavrilova – she knew it would only be hard work that would reap the benefits. The shoulder surgery in 2016 was a test of not only her patience but her will.
“It was bad, because straight away they told me, ‘you’re out for a year’,” she said.
“In that year when I came back, I didn’t really play a full schedule. I was still recovering and I didn’t really feel like I was back.
“And then this year just past is the first where I felt like I really could train hard and not really think about my shoulder. I could actually focus on getting my ranking up and actually playing.”
She wasted no time in her rehabilitation, but admitted that there had been dark times – not helped by reading up on a few worst-case scenarios – that had only been bearable thanks to those closest to her.
“I love to run, so it was hard to just be away from everything,” she said.
“It got a little depressing at times but everything passes, even the bad times. I just got through it.
“I never thought ‘oh my god I’ll never play’.
“But then I listened to some stories and thought ‘whoa, so it is possible’. In the down times when I wasn’t in the best space mentally, I thought about the worst. That’s probably where my family ... came in and always talked to me and kept me on a good path.
“They were really positive. Without them, it probably would have been way slower and tougher.”
It’s a determination not to miss opportunities that drives her ahead of a home grand slam.
“(I was) feeling like I’d missed out on certain things which I wouldn’t say was my fault with the surgery and everything,” she said.
“I thought ‘my time in the sport is definitely limited’ and I kind of didn’t want to waste any more time. I wanted to get straight back into it as fast as I could. My determination is a big part of my personality.
“I’m never going to give up or cave in, so that came in handy in that situation.”