WIMBLEDON — Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova showed up to her Wimbledon press conference in an oversized Metallica T-shirt and strawberry-themed nails, still a bit surprised, she admitted, at how well she’s playing after her third-round win over Naomi Osaka.
Not because she’s unseeded and ranked No. 50, or because she’d just celebrated her 34th birthday the day before. Pavlyuchenkova knows the level of tennis she can still produce — she opened the year by reaching her ninth Grand Slam quarterfinal at the Australian Open and expected a strong season to follow. But just before Indian Wells, she was diagnosed with Lyme disease, a tick-borne infection.
Wimbledon: Scores | Order of play | Draws
“It was horrible,” Pavlyuchenkova said after defeating Naomi Osaka 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 in the Wimbledon third round. “I was fatigued, I was very neurotic and irritated. I constantly had headaches — especially in my right temple, it was pressing on my head all the time.
“I had a brain fog. I would start practicing and couldn’t even see clear sometimes — whenever the heart rate was going up, it was hitting me. I never thought it would be such a nasty disease.”
Pavlyuchenkova thinks she contracted the disease last year — but Lyme disease can have an incubation period of several months, and she did not realize straight away,
“My boyfriend had it,” she said. “I literally took the tick off him. It stayed four days under the hair on his neck, I thought it was a brown spot or something, because it’s very little. Then on my hand I had a red spot, but [thought] it could be a mosquito. I felt really bad during preseason, but I thought preseason is usually hard. I was falling asleep at 9 p.m. I thought, probably my age and hard training combination.”
Pavlyuchenkova underwent a six-week course of antibiotics, but continued to struggle in her recovery. Partly, she admits she was “stupid” because she wanted to play so much. She kept coming back too soon, only to suffer setbacks. But with Lyme disease, her doctors’ advice to “listen to her body” was easier said than done.
“I would feel OK, so I would go practice,” she said. “Then I’d almost pass out. Before Eastbourne, I had to take a week off because I started again too early and recovery was very bad. But I didn’t have any crazy symptoms. I was just tired. That’s why it was so difficult, because is it ‘tired’ where it’s still OK to push, or is it ‘tired’ where you need to be in bed?”
Here at SW19, Pavlyuchenkova thinks she’s finally starting to get a handle on the recovery process. More importantly, she’s gained some perspective.
“It feels almost yesterday I was the youngest on tour,” she said. “I was taking everything for granted. Every match I was winning I was like, pffft, just another match I won. Third round of a Slam, pffft. I was not appreciating anything because it was coming too easy. But I started to appreciate every match and every moment. A few months ago I couldn’t even practise. Then you think, maybe you will never have this moment again.
“I also don’t know how much is left in my career because I am very old now. It’s something I want to take to the fullest, so I don’t have regrets afterwards.”
