‘Almost ended up in a madhouse’

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Lucas Pouille was on his way to the top: he defeated Rafael Nadal at the 2016 US Open as a 22-year-old and won the Davis Cup with France a year later. In 2018 he was in the top 10 for the first time and in 2019 he reached the semi-finals at the Australian Open.

Today, the former French tennis hope is 29 years old and number 459 in the world. what went wrong Pouille was let down several times, first by his body, then by his head. It started with elbow surgery in 2020, followed by minor injuries.

Even log in the coach

The low point reached in 2022 after Roland Garros. “I suffered from depression, only slept an hour a night and started drinking alone,” Pouille recalled in an interview with the French sports newspaper “L’Équipe”. He should have been recovering from a rib injury in a hospital in Nice. “But I couldn’t sleep at night and stared at the ceiling with wide eyes. It was really scary.”

Instead of talking about his depression, he closed himself off. He even had to lie to his coach Felix Mantilla: “I told him the sleepy eyes were the result of an allergy.” Fortunately, Pouille pulled the emergency brake at the last minute. He stopped touching a tennis racket at the end of 2022. “Otherwise I would have ended up in the madhouse of Sainte-Anne,” he says.

Olympia 2024 as incentive

He’s better today. The prospect of the 2024 Paris Olympics excites him so much that he gives tennis another chance. “Of course the lifestyle has changed. From the semi-finals of the Grand Slam to the first round on a Challenger, there are a few zeros less.”

But he doesn’t seem to care. Pouille even blames the money for his illness at a young age. “When you’re young and making money you take advantage of it, you see priorities where they really aren’t. I’m more mature now. I have my daughter. That’s more important than buying nice clothes or a nice car.” (cmu)

Source : Blick