A dominant win in the last warm-up tournament before a Grand Slam doesn’t sound like an occasion for an Olympic gold medalist to express disbelief. But in Adelaide, after a 6-2, 1-0 (ret.) victory over world No. 14 Anna Kalinskaya, Belinda Bencic is at a loss.

“I didn’t even think I’d be here,” Bencic, 27 and the world No. 421, said in her on-court interview.

Bencic isn’t returning from a long injury. She’s done that already, recovering from wrist surgery and a five-month layoff in 2017 to rise from the 300s to a high of world No. 4 and then that Olympic gold in Tokyo in 2021, where she beat Marketa Vondrousova in the final. She’s doing what so many women do outside of tennis, but has until recently been a rarity in the upper echelons of the sport: coming back from a career break during which she gave birth to her first child, Bella in April 2024.

She may not have believed the speed of her return to form, but she has no doubts about where she can go now.

“I’m really confident about getting back to where I was and even better,” she said in a recent interview via Zoom from Slovakia, where both her parents are from.

“I felt really inspired and brave enough to have a baby mid-career because a lot of other athletes and tennis players have done it before. It’s not like this is not possible. Everyone showed that it’s possible, and they got back to the same level.”

There was a time not that long ago when having a baby was considered the end of a tennis player’s career. Margaret Court, Evonne Goolagong Cawley and Kim Clijsters won Grand Slams after giving birth, but generally players would only start families in retirement.

Then, in 2016, Serena Williams won the Australian Open while eight weeks pregnant. She went on to reach four more Grand Slam finals after giving birth to her first child, Olympia, in September 2017 and coming close to death from complications. Williams’ announcement of her pregnancy was a watershed moment for tennis, with an increasing number of players feeling comfortable having a mid-career break to start a family as a result.

Victoria Azarenka reached the U.S Open final in 2020, almost four years after her son Leo was born, and the woman she lost to that night, Naomi Osaka, returned to the tour for the 2024 season after the birth of daughter Shai in July 2023. Osaka, 27, is looking to get back to her best in 2025 after an up-and-down comeback last year. In the 2024 Indian Wells main draw, Azarenka and Osaka were among seven mothers competing, including former world No. 1s and Grand Slam champions Angelique Kerber and Caroline Wozniacki, who faced off in the fourth round.

Elina Svitolina enchanted the Wimbledon crowd in 2023 by reaching the semifinals only three months after returning to the tour and nine months after giving birth, equalling her best-ever showing at a Grand Slam in the process. The Ukrainian ended the year as world No. 25, winning the WTA’s ‘comeback player of the year’ award. America’s Taylor Townsend, 28, had her best-ever season last year. She won the Wimbledon women’s doubles with Katerina Siniakova (her first Grand Slam title), reached the U.S. Open mixed doubles final with Donald Young and achieved a singles career-high ranking of No. 46 following a run to the quarters of the Canadian Open WTA 1000 (one rung below the Grand Slams). Her son, Adyn, was born in March 2021.

Bencic, who enters the first Grand Slam of the season with her special ranking of No. 15, credits the significant shift in attitudes for helping her believe that she could follow in their footsteps.

Belinda Bencic and Martin Hromkovic celebrate her Olympic gold in singles at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. (Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)

She cites the legendary American athlete Allyson Felix, who continued to win Olympic medals and break world records after giving birth, while also namechecking Williams, Azarenka and less-heralded tennis players such as Stefanie Voegele and Yanina Wickmayer as inspirations. She’s had conversations about the realities of coming back with Kerber, who retired at the Paris Olympics in July 2024 and has discussed balancing tennis and childcare with Swiss compatriot Roger Federer.

Bencic is also aware that, as with returning to the tennis court, preparation can sometimes be overtaken by factors beyond a player’s control. America’s world No. 11 Danielle Collins planned to retire in November aged 30 to start a family, but put that on hold when she was told that her endometriosis was presenting complications with her getting pregnant. Ons Jabeur, a three-time Grand Slam finalist, has spoken poignantly of her desire to have a baby — but only once she’s landed that elusive first major title.

“It felt like it was right for us at this moment of our lives,” Bencic said of her and her Martin Hromkovic’s figuring out when to start a family.

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The WTA Tour has become a more hospitable place for players returning after having children in the last few years. Since 2019, players have been able to use the ranking they had before going on hiatus to enter 12 tournaments over a three-year period from the birth of their child. If ranked high enough to be seeded in any of their first eight tournaments back, players are also protected from facing a seeded player in the opening round. When Williams began her comeback in 2018 having previously been world No. 1, she was having to enter tournaments unseeded.

There is also a performance health team, which offers tailored services throughout the process from support with breastfeeding or postpartum health to diaphragm and core physiotherapy to prevent delays in recovery. It offers personalized nutrition plans for lactation and athletic performance, and bespoke recommendations for postpartum sleep disturbances. At the Grand Slams and events ranging from WTA 1000s like Madrid and Rome to 500-level tournaments like the United Cup and Stuttgart, there is on-site childcare, but this is not a standard across the circuit. Wozniacki last year told PA that she had been treated well but also that “there should be more done for women coming back from maternity leave.”

A WTA spokesperson told The Athletic that regulatory differences in childcare provision across host countries make a universal childcare policy unworkable. They added that the WTA “encourages” tournaments to offer childcare on a case-by-case basis.

“We remain committed to providing resources to help balance parenthood and the demands of competing at the highest level,” the spokesperson said.

So far, those resources do not include maternity pay. Osaka last year said “having a kid shouldn’t feel like a punishment” from a financial perspective in an interview with the BBC, but there has been no movement on the subject since November 2023, when Steve Simon, then chief executive of the WTA, described it as “scheduled for review” in a letter to players.

Sources briefed on the initiative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships within the sport, have told The Athletic that the WTA is keen to institute such a policy and discussions with the players are ongoing. Osaka and Azarenka both emphasized that it would be lower-ranked players who need such an initiative more than former champions with significant sponsorship like themselves.

“I think we have a lot of work to do but they’re definitely moving on the right track because the questions are being asked,” Townsend told The Athletic in a recent interview.

Taylor Townsend waves to her family after winning the women’s doubles at Wimbledon in 2024. (Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)

Like Bencic, Townsend believes that the normalization of having children while on tour will help to effect change. “Things can definitely move quicker now because there are a lot more moms on tour,” Townsend said.

“I think we’re going to see more as the years go on.”

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Bencic, who won the 2015 Canadian Open by beating four of the top six players in the world — including Williams — and reached the top 10 the following year at 18, played the San Diego Open in September 2023 while around eight weeks pregnant. Her first tournament back with a ranking was an ITF W75 in Petange, Luxembourg, in November 2024, when she was world No. 1213. By early December she was No. 913, leaping to world No. 421 after reaching the final of the WTA 125 in Angers, France and beating world No. 123 Chloe Paquet in the United Cup at the end of the month.

But the beginning of her return to the court was far from the start of her journey back. Around eight weeks after giving birth to Bella, Bencic starting doing pelvic floor and core stability exercises. Gradually she started trying to rebuild some of her muscle and playing a bit of tennis just in the forecourt. After about four months, she felt like she could start hitting again, but she says that it’s “your reactions” that take the longest to come back into focus. “On the return, your eyes are basically trained by playing every day and seeing the ball,” she explains. “This is not talent. You don’t have that, you have to train it.”

She described the transformation of pregnancy as at first “really strange,” a view shared by other players in a similar position to her. Speaking in a news conference at the Australian Open, Osaka said that it was “really tough to even run” post-partum.

“I do understand why it’s very difficult to, I guess, get to a professional level,” she added.

For Bencic, she quickly acclimatized to the changes to her body — until, as she puts it, “you’re not pregnant anymore, then it’s weird.”

“The only difficult thing was not being able to move or do a lot of sports. And in the end, it felt very limiting and I couldn’t wait until I could have a run again or go to the gym. So it really went from 100 to zero,” Bencic said.

“I have to say kudos to every woman out there because it’s really crazy how fast it changes in such a little time. You go from being 100 percent fit to pregnancy and then afterwards it takes like a lot of time. I think they say you’ve been pregnant for nine months or so and you need the same amount of time afterwards to feel like you were before.

“I’m so amazed by how the body works,” she said.

Bencic used the events in Luxembourg and France as a testing ground — not just to see where her game was at, but also how things would work logistically with a baby daughter in tow. The practice court and match court initially felt like “two different universes,” but that final in Angers and her win over Paquet helped build confidence. Even a sobering 6-1, 6-1 thrashing at the hands of world No. 4 Jasmine Paolini at the United Cup was both a reminder of how steep the top of the tennis mountain is and a positive reality check for where she wants to be.

Belinda Bencic in Hamburg, where competed without a ranking in one of her first events back. (Gregor Fischer / Press Alliance via Getty Images)

Logistically, she’s found a way of making it work, helped by Bella being a very good sleeper and Hromkovic, who is also Bencic’s physical trainer, looking after Bella while Bencic trains and competes. Hromkovic can often be seen with Bella in a sling on his chest, watching on while Bencic practices; both of Bella’s grandmothers pitch in and Bencic’s mother, Dana, will join mother, father and daughter at the Australian Open. Bencic is adapting to playing on less sleep, such a crucial thing for any athlete, but is grateful that Bella generally has pretty uninterrupted nights.

Logistical decisions like these also carry an emotional weight, with the feelings of guilt so many parents feel when having to prioritize their careers over childcare. Dealing with these challenges forms part of the mental health support players get from the WTA, and while Bencic is only just figuring these things out, for Townsend it’s been an ongoing concern.

“There’s a guilt sometimes that I feel being gone for so many weeks, then a guilt about coming home for two days after being gone for three weeks, that is so tough for me,” she said.

“So ultimately I focus on the quality over quantity and just try to be sure that the time I do spend with him is something that he’ll remember.”

Becoming a mother has lent Bencic this kind of perspective, both on her family life and her tennis. “Tennis used to be my one and only life, everything I ever worked for,” she says.

“I would put so much pressure on myself to deliver a good match and a good performance, and if I would have a bad practice, I would think all day about it. That’s completely different now.

“It’s more like a job, it’s more separate. It’s still important to me, I still have the passion and everything, but it’s not everything. I can lose a match and I don’t feel like ‘My god, this is it.’”

(Top photo: Steve Christo / Corbis via Getty Images)