On Wednesday morning at the National Tennis Centre adjoining Melbourne Park, 10-year-old Charlotte Maria was swapping sizzling groundstrokes with a Wimbledon semi-finalist.
The German is the eldest daughter of Tatjana Maria, a tour standard-bearer who is showing the current generation of her peers that it is possible to be a mother and a top tennis player.
“I love to do it because it is my daughter. Everybody would do the same. I don’t care if I have a match or don’t have a match. I go out there every morning and I try,” Maria said.
“She wants to improve and she wants to practise and I can do that. It makes me really happy.
“If you ask me if I would prefer if I win a grand slam title or Charlotte, I would tell you 100 times Charlotte.”
At a time where recent Australian Open champions Ash Barty, Naomi Osaka and Angelique Kerber are pregnant – with the latter two saying they will return to playing – Maria is among the mothers travelling the world as a tennis player.
Dual-Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka, who described herself this week as an “obnoxious” soccer mum to son Leo, and American Taylor Townsend also count among them.
Elina Svitolina, a former world No.3 and the wife of French star Gael Monfils, gave birth to daughter Skai in October and is planning a return to the tour, too.
Whether the Ukrainian, or Osaka and Kerber for that matter, can return or better their previous heights is a matter of intrigue.
In the Open era, only the greats have returned from giving birth to win further grand slams. Evonne Goolagong Cawley is the only mother to have won Wimbledon in the Open era.
Margaret Court and Kim Clijsters both claimed three grand slam titles after becoming mums.
And being a legend is no sure thing either.
Serena Williams won an Australian Open while pregnant with her daughter Olympia. But a 24th grand slam title eluded her. When Williams explained her decision to “evolve away from tennis” last year, she spoke of her daughter, Olympia’s, repeated requests for a baby sister.
Victoria Azarenka with her son, Leo.Credit:Tennis Australia
“Believe me, I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family. I don’t think it’s fair. If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labor of expanding our family. Maybe I’d be more of a Tom Brady if I had that opportunity,” Williams wrote in her famous essay for Vogue.
“… I’m turning 41 this month, and something’s got to give.”
As netball great Liz Ellis has written, a woman’s fertility “generally falls off the proverbial cliff at around 35 years of age, and declines pretty rapidly over the next decade. Yet for many women’s sports stars, the years leading up to that age are their athletic prime”.
Many women have returned to the top of their sports after having babies – cricket’s Sarah Elliott, netball’s Laura Geitz and Kim Ravaillion, AFL trailblazer Daisy Pearce (who had twins), basketball GOAT Lauren Jackson – but this is the exception rather than the rule.
“And the rule is that the vast majority of female athletes, having a baby in the midst of their career isn’t feasible or desirable,” Ellis said.
Of current mothers on the tennis tour, Azarenka reached another final but is yet to add a third major.
“When you talk to them now, it’s more intense listening to what they say,” Kerber, 35, told the WTA website in December.
“We see the mums come back, also winning big titles. And I hope I can also be one of them, inspiration for new mums and women to come back to doing their business.
“And when I come back, I want to come back 100 per cent, fit again and feel good.”
Serena Williams, with her daughter Olympia, was pregnant when she won the Australian Open. Credit:AP
Combining work with motherhood is tricky, and it is no different for professional athletes.
The Australian Institute of Sport launched a landmark study two years ago to identify factors to facilitate the return to competition for elite sportswomen who become mothers.
Athletes in domestic sports highlighted support networks and strategies that made it easier to travel with a newborn as critical to enabling them to return to the field or court earlier.
In team sports, there was often a friend to lean on, or a staff member around to give a hand.
Some lamented the lack of a framework, or clear pregnancy policies, that provided consistent information for mothers considering the merits of returning to their sport of choice.
Some sports have been slow to support female athletes planning a family.
In 2015, the Matildas boycotted two games amid a stand-off with a governing body that had refused the team’s request to pay pregnant players or financially assist their return to play.
“It’s already in the back of my mind that I have to retire at a certain age, not because my body isn’t good enough but because I want to have a family,” 25-year-old defender Laura Alleway said at the time.
And FIFA this week made a landmark discrimination ruling against one of Europe’s biggest clubs, Olympique Lyonnais, for their underpayment of a player on maternity leave.
The degrees of difficulty in tennis are tougher given the demands of travelling the globe for up to 40 weeks a year.
When Maria gave birth to Charlotte in 2013, she and her husband Charles Edouard-Maria leant on each other as she considered a return to the tour.
“Because I was one of the first, I didn’t get a lot of advice from anybody,” she said.
“I just did it. We did it. It was normal. Now, for sure, a lot of players ask me for advice. But, at the time, I just rolled with it.”
Townsend, who won her first grand slam match since becoming a mother on Tuesday when too good for Diane Parry, has spent weeks away from her son Adyn Aubrey.
She chewed the fat with Clijsters and Williams on how best to balance her life and said their advice was invaluable.
“Kim’s advice was very important to me because she did it and she lived it and then came back better, won a slam and then bounced out. I think that is the best way to do things,” Townsend said.
Balancing the budget, along with family priorities, is another factor.
Maria, a Wimbledon semi-finalist last year and also the winner of two WTA Tour titles, could not envisage travelling without her children Charlotte and Cecilia, who was born in 2021.
“It was clear from the beginning, when I was pregnant, that we would be doing it all together or we don’t do it at all,” she said.
“They travel all the time with us. Everywhere we go, they are also with us. I could not leave them at home and travel a lot.”
Townsend is determined to set a good example for her son. There is an economic factor at play in her return to the tour, with her form since becoming a mother very encouraging.
She travels with a nanny at times, but it is not always possible and Australia is an expensive destination.
“Like, my financial situation versus Kim’s financial situation versus Serena’s versus Vika’s, we are in different circles,” she said.
“For me, I was like, ‘By a certain time, I need to start playing, so I can start making some money again. I need to start replenishing the pot’.
“[But] when I left home, I was pretty sad. I’m sure you guys saw my Instagram [post] where I was like, ‘I’m going to miss you so much’. [I was] crying and everything.
“It’s incredibly important for me to make the times that I have count.”
The WTA Tour updated its special ranking rule in 2018 to make it easier for players to return from pregnancy, illness or injury.
A three-year protected ranking window was included for new mothers, among other measures.
That innovation was not around when American tennis player Elizabeth Mandlik was following her mother, dual Australian Open champion Hana Mandlikova, around the legends tour in the 2000s.
Mandlik, now 21, made her Australian Open debut this week but one of her brightest childhood memories is of being looked after at the All England club creche.
“I was very young and she put us in day care there. But I can remember it clearly. That is when I realised my mother might be someone really important,” Mandlik said.
“I was super young. But travelling felt normal. She is my mum. It is what I grew up with.”
Maria says simple measures like assisting with accommodation reservations that would allow for bigger hotel rooms for mothers would make touring life easier for families.
As it stands, her daughters are seeing the world and enjoying a unique childhood. One day, similarly to Mandlik, they might aspire to follow the path blazed by their own mother.
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