After Hodgkin Lymphoma, Tennis Player Wins Just by Being There

The sinking feeling you get when a well-known person dies of “your disease” has an opposite: The boost when someone overcomes it. The Spanish tennis player Carla Suarez Navarro didn’t have “my” exact disease – acute myeloid leukemia – but she did have a blood cancer – Hodgkin lymphoma, diagnosed in July 2020 after she felt a little under the weather and was unable to practice. And she did overcome it.¹

Setting a goal can help keep you focused

I am not a tennis star, but I am a tennis player and a runner, and my fatigue while running a race was a sign, like hers, that presented itself while I was doing my sport. (In my case it was a much slower than usual time in a 10K race.) So, I can relate. She had six months of chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy, and in an Instagram post on April 22, wearing a shirt with the words Stronger than Cancer, she announced she was cancer-free. Less than six weeks after that, she played in a major tournament, the French Open, in Paris. She lost her match to Sloane Stephens, but everyone agreed that just by being there, she had won.

I could also relate to how the goal of getting back to tennis kept her focused. I kept a can of tennis balls on the windowsill in my hospital room to remind me that one day I would be on the court.

“It was a long time, really tough moments, tough months," Suarez Navarro said after the French Open match. "But, well, every time I had on my mind that I want to be here, I want to come back.”

The most important match

Before the match, the 32-year-old former world number 6 told Tennis.com, “I already won the most important match of my life.” The author of a piece on the tennis website had an interesting point: “Making adjustments and taking on new challenges are two qualities rooted in tennis players,” he wrote. I know about this from playing my own matches. You learn to make adjustments that you can apply to the rollercoaster of cancer treatment.

“While Suarez Navarro was understandably nervous about her first chemotherapy session, during a pandemic no less, she was confident her background would lend an invisible hand in facing an unfamiliar opponent,” Matt Fitzgerald wrote.

She had planned to retire but changed her mind to make the current season her farewell tour. So, after the French Open came Wimbledon, which, as I write this on July 10, marks the penultimate day of the venerable grass-court tournament. She went three sets (the maximum for women’s tennis) and though she lost to Ashleigh Barty, the eventual winner of the tournament, you could see that she had won just by bouncing back.

An emotional farewell

“It was an emotional farewell, with her mom in the stands as the crowd rose out of their seats to give the Spaniard a standing ovation,” Tennis.com reported.

“Your class and courage will forever be permanent. Congratulations Carla,” Barty tweeted. In fact, the whole tennis world was full of admiration. “True warrior spirit,” Novak Djokovic said. One of the most touching moments, as she walked off the court, was the shot of her mother tearfully filming her daughter. You could tell that she wasn’t crying about her daughter’s loss, but rather about her triumph. You don’t have to like tennis to tear up yourself if you watch the video of the crowd applauding the Spaniard as she walked off the court.²