Few players wear their heart on their sleeve as much as Ons Jabeur. The Tunisian, whose sublime skills and smile have lit up the women’s Tour over the past decade, reached the Wimbledon final in 2022 and 2023 and earned herself the nickname Minister of Happiness.
Somewhere along the way, Jabeur lost the joy. Keen to start a family, she had told herself if she won Wimbledon in 2023, that would be the perfect time to take a break. It didn’t happen – she lost to Marketa Vondrousova – and so continued playing. But injuries, illness and the scenes of human suffering in Gaza made her struggle over the past year.
“What’s happening in the world, it affected me more than I had expected,” the 30-year-old says on the eve of the Australian Open, which begins on Sundayb. “I try to stay away from the media, because every time I open a video it is horrible.
“I try to help as much as I can but the tough part is I know I cannot really help as much as I want to. The loss at Wimbledon affected me also. A lot of things together, with the injuries and playing, all that baggage, didn’t help the performance.
“I tried to remind myself why I started playing tennis. The court should be my happy place and if it’s not the case then something is probably wrong.
“Everybody calls me the Minister of Happiness, sees me happy all the time, but I’m not happy all the time. There are some moments there, anger, sadness. You can see on the court, I get angry a lot. It’s a mix of a lot of things. But I try to highlight that happiness is the best emotion anybody could feel. It’s very important to remind myself of such a beautiful emotion.”
Jabeur was one of the few players to speak out about the situation in Gaza and she continues to work to improve things in her role as an ambassador for the World Food Programme (WFP). While she thinks tennis could have done more to help, she knows the politics of the situation make it difficult.
“The important thing to speak out is to try to find peace somehow, to raise my voice, to use my platform, but also to help the kids, the families. They’re suffering every day,” she says.
“As a WFP ambassador, we’re trying to get a simple thing we have every day here, food. They don’t have that and now it is the winter there so babies are freezing to death because of that, which for me, it’s inhuman.
“How can we live in the world like this? What is happening in the world? For me, it doesn’t even make sense. It just is really, really horrible.
“Kids are dying everywhere, either in Ukraine or in Gaza or in other countries. It is very sad. I stand by justice. I stand by peace. That’s the most important thing. If they stop firing and selling guns or whatever, this will be over. But it’s a little bit more complicated than that.”
Separating what is happening in the world from her job has not been easy, a task made more difficult by knee trouble and then a shoulder injury that forced her off the Tour after last year’s US Open. Some bad choices also affected her as she fell from No 6 at the start of 2024 to No 40 as the Australian Open begins.
If she could have done something different, she would have taken better care of her body, she said, admitting she had played through injury and sickness. “As a competitive athlete, you always want to play, even knowing I was not 100%. But I will learn from these mistakes.
“What kills me the most is the injustice that we’re having in this world. I’m working on that. I’m trying to separate things, even though it is very difficult. What’s the point in playing tennis if innocent people are dying?”
Andy Murray admits coaching is more demanding than he expected but he believes he can help Novak Djokovic win more grand slam titles.
Murray will get a first taste of life on the other side during a match on Monday when Djokovic takes on young American Nishesh Basavareddy in the first round of the Australian Open.
The 10-time Melbourne champion is in the unfamiliar position of being seeded down in seventh after failing to win a grand-slam title in 2024 for the first time in seven years. The only title claimed by Djokovic last year was one he had been chasing his whole career – Olympic gold in Paris.
Hiring his former great rival Murray was another sign that Djokovic is still searching for an extra edge, and the Scot said: "In my opinion, from watching his matches last year, there was at times a little bit missing, but there wasn't at the Olympics, and also at Wimbledon.
"When he was fully motivated and fully focused, he won the Olympics, which is an incredible achievement. I think it was only natural after that for there to be a bit of a letdown, because he'd set himself really one target and one goal for the year and he did that."
Of working with his former rival Djokovic, Murray added: "He's been unbelievably open, and the communication when we've been on court with each other and away from the court has been really, really good.
"I think the first couple of days it was a bit strange. But both of us have been trying to encourage that communication, try and build that trust.
"And with frustrations on court and stuff. I totally understand that side of things for him. I'm here to try and help him as best as I can.
"I've found at times coaching maybe a little bit more demanding than I expected. I think when you're a player, you just see what you do on the court, and you're not involved in all the conversations with your team that go into each day, about how you're feeling, or what it is that you're going to work on, and the strategy and preparations for matches.
"But, obviously, as a coach and a team member, the days look a bit different. And, yes, it's pretty demanding." PA Media
This is Jabeur’s 14th year on the WTA Tour. It took her many years to find her feet but she has reached three grand slam finals and has been ranked as high as No 2. Gifted with a deft touch, she can bamboozle any opponent when healthy and she is still aiming high, trying to win that elusive slam title. “That’s the ultimate goal,” she says.
“But the most important thing, I want to get back to my game. I just want to win the grand slam with the game that I know. You see a lot of girls playing at an amazing level. I want to have that level and I don’t want to just play one or two matches at that level, I want it to remain high.”
It may take Jabeur time to find top form after injury, but she is confident it will happen. Having a family remains a life goal, too, and the coming 12 months are pivotal. “It is a crucial year for me to take a lot of decisions,” she says. “But I just want to take it step by step. If I think a lot about my family, it puts a lot of pressure on me and I don’t need more pressure, for sure.
“It’s a question of acceptance, if I am satisfied with the career I’m having right now or not, and what is it going to take for me to do more? Do I have the energy to do more? There’s a lot of question marks in there but I am taking it day by day and maybe I’ll have my answers during the season.”
