Years after anorexia, hiatus, Trevisan reaches French Open quarterfinals
PARIS — Martina Trevisan has been doing video chats from her hotel room with her mental coach every day along the way to the quarterfinals at Roland Garros, a run the 159th-ranked qualifier acknowledges is “a little” shocking, just not as much to her as to everyone else.
So after Trevisan’s 6-4, 6-4 victory against No. 5 seed Kiki Bertens at Court Suzanne Lenglen on Sunday, which was just as out-of-nowhere at this out-of-nowhere French Open as Iga Swiatek’s 6-1, 6-2 win against 2018 champion and No. 1 seed Simona Halep over at Court Philippe Chatrier, the 26-year-old from Florence, Italy, planned to stick to the routine.
It’s helped her for the past two years, not merely the past two weeks, which also featured unexpected wins over Coco Gauff and 20th-seeded Maria Sakkari.
Trevisan’s tennis coach, Matteo Catarsi, described one of the goals of the sessions with Florida-based Lorenzo Beltrame, whose clientele also includes three-time major semifinalist Johanna Konta, this way: “Not to feel uncomfortable in this environment, like someone who played in Grand Slam qualifying, but to feel like a queen, like a star.”
Trevisan and Beltrame chat. He gives her writing assignments. She works to find the right words to describe her thoughts and buttress her selfbelief. The exercise is important for where Trevisan is these days, in her sport and in her life. It’s been quite a journey, one Trevisan said hopes offers others this message: “Don’t ever give up, even in the toughest moments, where it really feels like life wants the worst for you, like it doesn’t care about you at all. Stay strong and seek the light. Because there is light there, and it will arrive.”
A decade ago, shortly after turning 16 but beset by the pressure of others’ expectations, promising prospect Trevisan quit tennis, which her mother teaches and her brother played professionally (her father was a pro soccer player).
She had anorexia, an experience and recovery she discussed in detail in a blog post two months ago.
“I hated my muscular body and I lost weight by adopting a diet that was just enough to survive,” Trevisan wrote, saying she eventually sought help and “re-learned how to eat and to make peace with my wounds and to appreciate my new body.”
Then, having returned to tennis in 2014 from a 4 1/2year break, having toiled at tiny events offering total prize money of $10,000, having moved up the rankings enough to enter the qualifying rounds at Grand Slam tournaments but failing on her first nine attempts to reach the main draw, she finally made a breakthrough this year.
Trevisan made her debut in a major’s 128-player bracket at the Australian Open in January after making it through qualifying, exiting from the first round with a straight-set loss to eventual champion Sofia Kenin.
Trevisan learned, though, that she was ready to compete with the best.
“I’m more confident,” she says now. “I know I belong here.”
Trevisan tossed her racket after closing out the biggest win of her career with a backhand lob she couldn’t see land; she knew the match was over when she saw the expression on 2016 French Open semifinalist Bertens’ face.
A giddy Trevisan frequently laughed as she spoke in Italian with reporters — about exactly how much she’s earned so far ($330,000, more than her total career winnings entering 2020), about how she’d describe her personality (“I try to smile a lot, and I do; but when I’m sad, you definitely can tell that I’m sad”) and whether, given everything she went through, Trevisan thought she could return to this level of play.
“Well,” she replied, “I’d never been to ‘this level.’ ”