Zoe Hives was an elite athlete one day, scampering across the baseline in tennis matches played across the world, chasing down each ball like it was the last pinball she had paid for, refusing to let it pass.
By the next, she couldn’t walk from her front door to the letterbox.
She would get up, and then her heart would start racing, her head spinning, a world feeling like it was turning all the time when, in effect, it was coming to a grinding halt as COVID-19 suffocated society.
They say an athlete’s career can be over at a moment’s notice, but one in their early 20s with an illness she couldn’t understand?
“It was pretty much in the space of three months, and I was a mess,” Hives says. “I was barely on this earth [after a match in Japan]. I was playing some of my best tennis … then I was done.”
Australian tennis star Zoe Hives in action during the United Cup and inset with one of her cows.Credit:AP, Supplied
As Australia searches for its next star to take the mantle as the country’s top-ranked women’s player after Ash Barty, a contemporary exactly six months Barty’s junior is embarking on her own epic comeback.
Hives didn’t pick up a bat and ball on her hiatus from tennis. She laid flat in bed for the best part of a couple of years. The United Cup representative contracted, and still battles, a debilitating blood disorder she still doesn’t know how to pronounce.
Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome is a problem associated with the nervous system. Hives just calls it POTS. As simple as the acronym might sound, it’s a bastard of a condition to try to conquer.
At the end of a long stretch of travelling during 2019, as she closed in on the world’s top 100, Hives knew something wasn’t right. Apart from the physical troubles, she couldn’t think straight. “Brain fog” she was later told. At the end of one match in Darwin, she tried to walk up a set of stairs and virtually collapsed.
“A five-minute walk was way too much,” Hives says. “To go to the farm, I had to have breaks and sit down just to see my cows. I couldn’t have conversations. I think you have to experience it with someone to understand how debilitating the whole chronic fatigue thing is.”
Surfer Tyler Wright suffered from a similar condition, which manifests itself after a viral infection. Hives sought the counsel of the same doctor who was treating Wright, and then watched the star return to the world tour to fuel her own hope. But it’s been a long and tortuous process.
Only this year has Hives felt good enough to start playing tennis again regularly, and has been the feelgood presence in an Australian United Cup team dogged by the 11th-hour withdrawal of Nick Kyrgios.
Hives has a ranking so far below every other player in the field, more than one onlooker has quietly asked this week: why is she playing?
Zoe Hives during her united Cup match against Katie Swan.Credit:AP
But Hives’ previous best ranking of 140 has been protected for three years to allow her to overcome the serious medical condition. It helped her enter the United Cup as Australia’s second singles representative behind Ajla Tomljanović, before she started with a straight sets loss to Great Britain’s Katie Swan on Thursday night.
Being on the court was a feat in itself.
She only has one more tournament left for her exemption and will enter Australian Open qualifying in the hope of making the first grand slam of 2023. It’s the same path she took to make Wimbledon this year.
Zoe Hives with her cow-themed phone cover.
“It never crossed my mind [to retire], but this year I’ve had some tough moments where in the tournament before Wimbledon I was barely able to see where the ball was,” Hives says. “Even after that last trip there was an increase in my symptoms. That’s been tough to have to deal with.
“Every time I’ve come back from an injury or my sickness, I think, ‘This just feels right’. It’s so much fun to run around on a court and hit some balls. A lot of people I’ve talked to have said it will take up to five years. I’m up to the three-year mark, so I just need some more time.”
But time, she knows, can catch up with you.
At 26, Hives has a bit in common with Barty – “I think I only played her in the 12s and under nationals doubles, and I’m pretty sure my partner and I got one game” – who has already retired as a three-time slam winner and world No.1.
They both struggled to adapt to the demands of international travel, and after months abroad at 15, Hives almost made good on a promise not to return to the game and spend more time at home in tiny Kingston, just outside Ballarat.
“Coming from a town of 50 people to travelling the world, it was a big change,” she says. “When I was in grade two the school closed down because there were seven kids, including myself. That’s how big the town is.”
Really?
“Down the main street, there’s maybe 30 or 40 houses. I think a pub opened up recently. That’s it. There’s literally nothing.”
It might be a laughing matter to many, but rugby league supercoach Wayne Bennett and Latrell Mitchell bonded over cows when they teamed up at South Sydney. For Hives, her cows on the farm have had a much deeper meaning and purpose as they helped resurrect her life, and career.
She has one named Melvis because she reckons it shares a hairstyle with the music legend. Another is named after Maxwell Smart for its intelligence. She knows all their little quirks and traits, and then pulls out a phone cover designed in the pattern of a cow.
It makes her laugh, and there hasn’t been much of that in the past few years.
“I believe my tennis is better than when I was sick, but it’s being able to be out there day after day and week after week,” she says. “That’s my goal.
“I just want to get to that stage where I can be out on court all the time. I would love to get to top 100. That would be amazing. I feel like I can get there, but it’s all about health and body.
“And even with what I’ve been through, there have been people who have had helluva lot worse than I’ve had. It’s made me grow a lot and I do appreciate every time I get to walk out on court. It’s a dream come true really I get to walk out onto court and represent my country.”
Watch the United Cup live and free on the 9Network – Channel 9 and 9Gem. Every match will be available live on 9Now.
