“Many can’t do it anymore”
Eva Lys warns about mental stress in tennis
December 5, 2025 – 4:21 p.mReading time: 2 min.
Hamburg’s tennis ace Eva Lys denounces the excessively long season and its consequences. Between numerous injuries and mental exhaustion, there is hardly any recovery.
The Hamburg tennis player Eva Lys has sharply criticized the long season and its high level of stress. In an interview with Sport1, the 23-year-old emphasized the numerous injuries and the mental exhaustion of many players.
Eva Lys said: “We have a lot of injuries – and I don’t want to use the word burnout, but we have a lot of people who just can’t do it anymore, who don’t have the mental capacity because it’s just too much.”
Lys made it clear that the short season break in tennis was inadequate compared to other sports. She continued: “The tour is far too long. In all other sports you have a good off-season in which nothing happens. In tennis it is far too short. We have two weeks in which we can take a vacation.” Her own health has also forced her to miss some tournaments in order to recover.
On the women’s tour, the WTA finals without German participation ended at the beginning of November, while smaller tournaments are still taking place. The men’s ATP Finals were held until mid-November, followed by the Davis Cup finals. The new season begins around the turn of the year in Australia, which increases criticism of the short recovery time.
The effects of the long season and the high stress are also evident in the women’s national competition, the Billie Jean King Cup. The Germans competed there in mid-November due to injuries without the top 50 players Laura Siegemund and Tatjana Maria and in the end also without the ailing Lys – and were ultimately relegated. Rainer Schüttler subsequently resigned as team boss. Until 2014 the tournament was known as the Fed Cup.
