A tennis champion's coach returns to the court

On Wednesday, she and Arantxa Parra Santonja won their opening-round match in 2 hours, 22 minutes, beating Johanna Konta and Alison Riske, 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (3). On Thursday with Marcel Granollers, Medina Garrigues lost in the first round of the mixed doubles event, 6-2, 6-2, against Kristina Mladenovic and Alexis Musialek.

“I was trying to find the perfect moment to do it,” Medina Garrigues, 35, said of her comeback.

Her success with Ostapenko was a somewhat unplanned detour from her playing career. Medina Garrigues suffered a right shoulder injury at Wimbledon in 2016, partially dislocating the joint. Eager to participate in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics the next month, Medina Garrigues pushed through the pain, which ultimately left her unable to raise her arm to serve in the weeks afterward.

She stopped playing the week before the U.S. Open that August, after winning only one game in a loss at a tournament in New Haven, Connecticut.

“Normally with the injury that I have, you should immobilize the shoulder for two to three weeks,” she said. “I couldn’t because I had to play the Olympics. After that, I had a frozen shoulder, losing all mobility in the shoulder. So it’s like I had two injuries. It takes four or five months to recover all the feelings in the shoulder.”

At an age when many players would consider retirement, Medina Garrigues was determined not to let the injury decide when her career ended.

“I couldn’t retire then in a good way, playing at my best level,” she said. “So I had that on my mind already, to come back to play some tournaments to have a good retirement on the court.”

Medina Garrigues opted for a conservative rehabilitation process, without surgery. In the midst of that process came an offer from Ostapenko, with whom she shared an agent, to come on the tour as a coach.

The two started together at a WTA tournament in Prague in April of last year, with little inkling that a Grand Slam title was weeks away.

“What she did was something unbelievable,” Medina Garrigues said of Ostapenko’s title in Paris. “It was a big surprise for everybody, because she came here as No. 46 in the world. She was not in anyone’s plans of who wins the tournament — that’s true, we’re realistic about that.”

Medina Garrigues, who reached a high of No. 16 in singles and No. 3 in doubles, was herself a French Open doubles champion in 2008 and 2009 with Virginia Ruano Pascual. She said the satisfaction of Ostapenko’s win was “pretty close to the titles that I won as a player.”

“I was looking at her and seeing that she did something I never could do, so I was very proud of her,” Medina Garrigues said.

Ostapenko, who prefers to called Alona, was able to consolidate her successes, reaching the quarterfinals of Wimbledon and semifinals of prominent WTA tournaments in Wuhan, China, and then Beijing. But after the Beijing event in October, Medina Garrigues told Ostapenko of her desire to pursue her own path back to the tour.

“I spoke with her because I had already had a lot of conversations with myself,” she said. “Because I had this on my mind: What I am going to feel if I don’t retire playing on the court? It was really tough for me to make that decision, because what I didn’t want was in the future, to be staying at home regretting that I didn’t retire on the court.”

The decision coincided with another attractive offer: the Spanish Fed Cup captaincy. Unlike Ostapenko, who had wanted Medina Garrigues to focus solely on their work together, the Spanish federation was happy to have her finish her playing career while holding the Fed Cup position.

Medina Garrigues and Ostapenko’s successful partnership was followed by another Spanish woman piloting major success: Conchita Martinez, the previous Fed Cup captain for Spain, guided Garbiñe Muguruza to last year’s Wimbledon title while her primary coach, Sam Sumyk, was home with his expecting wife.

Medina Garrigues said more WTA players should enlist the help of former players, who often offer insights that those who haven’t played cannot.

“We have the experience, we remember the feelings that we had, what was working and what was not working,” she said. “That’s an advantage to help the players. In this case I was trying to say to Alona the experience that I had, and what I was doing when I was with no confidence, or with confidence.”

She said being a woman also helped. “In the case of female players, we understand more what the girls are thinking,” Medina Garrigues said. “I’m a girl, so I know the feelings, the pressure, the thoughts.”

Now, she gets to feel those feelings all over again.

“I’m happy to be on the court again,” she said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.