Taylor Townsend Blazes Her Own Tennis Trail While Amplifying Voice On Mental Health

Taylor Townsend says her 2-year-old son Aydn keeps her honest on a daily basis.

“It’s a never-ending cycle of learning. The worst thing you can do is think, ‘Yeah, I got this,’” says Townsend, 26, with a laugh. “In terms of learning how to balance my life, it’s been one of most difficult hurdles, but it has also been so rewarding. It really tests your fortitude because you have this person who’s 100% dependent upon you.”

The WTA Tour’s No. 19-ranked women’s doubles player became a mother in March 2021, and after she took an 18-month maternity leave, Townsend says she returned to the sport she’s played since childhood with a renewed passion and confidence.

But Townsend says that despite the hectic nature of pursuing a pro tennis career while simultaneously juggling motherhood, Townsend’s role as a parent has allowed her to take a step back and reevaluate her life priorities, including her commitment to self care and mental health. Townsend has tackled significant challenges on that front ever since she was a teenager, when, instead of celebrating her early successes at the youth level, she instead faced international scrutiny over her weight and body image during a tumultuous 2012.

That spring, when Townsend turned 16, she was the USTA’s No. 1 junior player in the world. But by the summer, her request for a wild-card entry in the U.S. Open main draw was rebuffed by USTA officials, who, only a few weeks earlier, had requested Townsend report to the organization’s Florida training center to work on her fitness regimen.

WSJTaylor Townsend: Why the USTA Benched America’s Best Junior – U.S. Open

Townsend ended up paying her own way for the 2012 U.S. Open girls’ tournament — instead of the USTA assuming her expenses — and she won the doubles title, while advancing to the quarterfinals in singles competition.

“It wasn’t easy to deal with such a personal issue at such a young age, a (teenage) girl talking about her body image and weight, way before any body positivity movement was prevalent,” says Townsend now. “But it was an opportunity for me to make a choice, ‘How am I going to deal with this? Do I give it power, and make myself feel less than? Or do I control the narrative?’

“I made the decision that I wasn’t going to let it stop me,” says Townsend. “It taught me how to deal with really uncomfortable situations and questions, and turn a negative or something (the critics) were trying to make me feel bad about, into a positive.” She adds that it actually helped that social media was still relatively new then.

“That was one less thing I had to deal with,” she says.

Townsend severed ties with the USTA soon after, and worked with former tennis player Zina Garrison, a 1990 Wimbledon women’s singles finalist.

“Zina served a great purpose, the time that I worked with her,” says Townsend. “After leaving the USTA, and being in a system where it’s, ‘Do what we say,’ and a slap on the wrist if you don’t, going with Zina, allowed me to be more free.”

When fellow tennis peer and former world No. 1 women’s singles player Naomi Osaka began to go public with her own mental health struggles the past few years, Townsend says it for certain helped other athletes, including herself, address their personal and professional hurdles without the fear of backlash or any stigma.

Townsend, who’s made almost $3 million in prize money during her career, says that after she had her son Adyn, she started prioritizing more, and developed a plan to keep her mental health in check going forward. One big step, she says, was to surround herself with a “really great support system.”

Townsend recently talked with Modern Health chief executive officer Alyson Watson about those decisions, and how it’s imperative for young athletes to realize early on that they need to build a solid network of people around them. Modern Health connects work professionals with mental health experts and resources, and has partnered with Osaka and the WTA.

“You spend so much time with a coach or trainer, and it’s so important to have really great people around you,” says Townsend. “You have to do that vetting process. This is my 11th year on the Tour, and I’m now finding a great team.”

And Dr. Jessica Watrous, a clinical health psychologist and the director of clinical affairs at Modern Health, agrees that in addition to some of the basic staples to nurture a healthy lifestyle — regular physical activity, proper sleep — young athletes need to avoid people who don’t have the athlete’s best interests at the forefront.

“The importance of a social support network, you can’t understate it,” says Watrous. “Its so important to acknowledge that it’s really quality over quantity.”

Townsend’s most recent singles match was at the Miami Open, where she lost a second-round match in three sets to Ekaterina Alexandrova. But match losses and unforced errors no longer cloud Townsend’s mind. And she now tries to impart the same advice to younger players that she says took a decade or more to embrace — don’t sweat the small stuff.

“To the younger generation, my biggest thing is, ‘Make sure you have a really great support system,’” says Townsend. “I have experienced being out on that island on your own, where you have to fend for yourself. It’s a terrible feeling. Who has your best interests? As a teenager, if you excel, it’s easy for people to pull you away from your grassroots. You’re a person before you’re a player. You have to be good internally in order to play your best tennis. Continue to work on you. All the other things will take care of themselves.”