‘It Gives Us Anxiety’ – Simona Halep Says She Found It Difficult to Play Tennis Because of the Ukraine-Russia Conflict

Simona Halep admits that the situations in the past two years have left everyone anxious. Halep is currently in Madrid playing her first tournament since her tie-up with Patrick Mouratoglou as her coach. Playing in the Spanish capital, Halep recently opened up on how the past two years have been disturbing for the tennis fraternity. Expressing her feelings, she also admitted that despite everything, these are things that no one can control.

Halep opens up on the unpleasant happenings of the past 2 years

The past two years have been a dark phase for the entire humanitarian community. With incidents taking place one after the other, the entire world has been a victim of mis-happenings. Tennis players are no different. Just like other people, these players also seem to undergo a similar thought process in such situations.

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A situation like this first arose in 2020 with the coming up of the pandemic. It was followed by the unreasoned disappearance of Chinese player Peng Shuai. Not being able to recover fully from the two, another such disturbing situation arose, this time as Russia-Ukraine crisis.

Opening up on the mental state of people seeing such incidents unfold, Halep said, “It’s tiring in my opinion for everybody and it gives us anxiety.”

Facing situations in which people suffered the most, a majority of professionals have been failing to concentrate on their work. Halep is no different. Going further, Halep admitted that there were multiple occasions when she struggled to place tennis as a priority. Talking about the difficulty in keeping tennis as a priority, Halep also asserted that things are not in anyone’s control in such situations.

She said, “I thought at one point that tennis is not that important anymore because of everything that is happening. With the pandemic I was super scared at the start, now the war I was super scared at the start. But it’s something we cannot control,”

Simona Halep on the tour

After suffering a semifinal loss in Indian Wells, Halep withdrew from the Miami Open following a leg injury. Taking rest, Halep is finally back on court playing at the Madrid Open.

She started her clay-court campaign with a first-round win over Shuai Zhang. The two-time champion will next face the home favorite, 2nd seeded, Paula Badosa in the second round.

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