Aryna Sabalenka shares honest mental health update days after her viral quit tennis comments

Aryna Sabalenka had many tennis fans worried after her emotional comments following the 2026 French Open. The World No. 1 openly spoke about feeling mentally exhausted after a painful quarterfinal loss and even said she wanted to quit tennis.

Those remarks quickly spread online and led to questions about whether the Belarusian star was seriously thinking about stepping away from the sport.Just a few days later, however, Sabalenka appeared to answer those questions herself. Instead of staying away from the court, she shared a light-hearted video on TikTok that showed she was already back training for the grass-court season. The video made fun of her own comments and suggested that, despite the frustration she felt in Paris, she is not planning to leave tennis behind.

The post came ahead of her first grass-court event of the year, the Berlin Open, which begins on June 13 as part of her preparation for Wimbledon.

Aryna Sabalenka explains French Open disappointment before returning to the practice court

Sabalenka’s emotional reaction came after her French Open quarterfinal defeat against Diana Shnaider. After winning the opening set, she was unable to close out the match and eventually lost 3-6, 7-5, 6-0. The defeat ended her hopes of reaching a first French Open final.Speaking after the match, Sabalenka admitted she was struggling mentally.

“Just want to quit tennis right now. We’ll see in few days. Hopefully I’ll get back on track mentally.”Those comments gained major attention, but her latest social media post painted a different picture. In the TikTok video, the first message read, “Me: I’m quitting tennis.” Moments later, the video showed her walking onto a grass court and practicing shots with another message saying, “Also me:”.The clip made it clear that the World No. 1 was already focused on her next challenge.During her post-match press conference, Sabalenka also explained what changed after the first set against Shnaider.“I feel like I had very decent opportunities in the second set. I screwed up, and then she stepped in and she played great. I feel like mentally I couldn’t really recover after second set. That really - yeah, I think that was the biggest mistake from me.”She also admitted how unusual the collapse felt.“Yeah, I don’t know when was the last time that happened to me that I lost 10 games in a row.

I don’t know. I guess mentally I got into a very deep, deep, dark hole over there, and I just couldn’t get back mentally on track.”According to reports from the French Open press conference, Sabalenka’s emotional comments also drew sympathy from tennis legend Venus Williams, who said she understood the disappointment that comes after a tough loss on one of tennis’ biggest stages.