At Wimbledon two years ago, the Polish tennis player Magda Linette sought out a competitor and friend, Sloane Stephens, for some advice. Not about her forehand or her serve, but about fertility.
Ms. Linette, then 32, wanted to be a mother one day. She knew in vitro fertilization was her best option because of a genetic condition she carried. And she knew the sooner doctors retrieved her eggs, the better her chances of one day having a baby.
But she had questions. How would the procedure affect her training? Would it interfere with the tennis season? Could she fail a drug test because of supplements she might have to take?
She figured Ms. Stephens, the 2017 U.S. Open winner, who often spoke publicly about her own egg retrieval, might have some answers. So, during a quiet moment in the locker room at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Ms. Linette pulled her aside.
“I’ve known Magda since I was 13 years old,” said Ms. Stephens, who encouraged Ms. Linette to undergo egg freezing. “We’re the same age, and we have the same life situation.” She added, “She shouldn’t have to stop playing tennis because she wants to have a family.”
Nine months later, Ms. Linette got another boost of encouragement. The Women’s Tennis Association, which runs the women’s tour, announced a Maternity Fund Program, which offered grants to pay for I.V.F. and egg freezing treatments available to more than 320 players, plus a year of paid maternity leave. The association later protected players’ rankings when they return after a fertility procedure.
Women often rely on friends to navigate the emotional labyrinth of fertility treatments. On WhatsApp chats and Slack threads, they ask how the injections will feel or which doctors have the best bedside manner. Tennis, however, is a sport where friendships tend to be guarded. Keeping a mental edge can be just as important as physical skill. Some of the greatest players in the sport have talked about its inherent loneliness.
“It’s hard to confide your deepest, most personal things to someone on Monday and then compete against them on Tuesday,” said Ms. Linette, who has won three career singles titles and reached the third round at the French Open this week.
But with these new benefits, a sisterhood of egg freezers is emerging in the sport. They know how it feels to fine-tune their bodies to perform in specific ways on the court, only to then submit to a treatment they can’t control. In locker rooms and players’ lounges, women offer tips, compare symptoms and console each other, if necessary.
Ms. Stephens, 33, has been something of a promoter and confidante in this effort. Her grandfather was an OB-GYN, and she has three cousins who were born through I.V.F. Her family talked openly about fertility and supported her.
“I just want to make sure that all of the girls going through that process have that same support,” said Ms. Stephens, who froze her eggs for the first time in 2022, “whether that be financially, emotionally, the whole shebang.”
A Saudi Negotiation
As fertility benefits have become more common in corporate workplaces, female athletes have pushed for them, too. W.N.B.A. players, for example, won maternity leave and fertility benefits in their 2020 collective bargaining agreement.
There is no union in women’s tennis; players are not employees, but more like independent contractors. They have a players’ council, which brings the concerns of players to the WTA.
Ms. Stephens served on the council for four years, through August 2023. In the fall of 2022, she began arguing for fertility benefits. She pushed for money to help pay for egg retrievals, which can cost $10,000 to $25,000 per cycle, and urged the tour to offer ranking protections so players recovering from the procedure could enter tournaments without losing too much ground.
Two years later, as the WTA negotiated a sponsorship deal with Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund, the tour suggested using the money for family planning.
Saudi Arabia has had a historically poor record on women’s rights. Activists have been arrested there, and women still need the approval of a male guardian to marry, although legal mechanisms exist to bypass that requirement. That the Saudis would pay for a benefit that helps women delay motherhood to suit their careers struck some as a “misalignment,” said Portia Archer, who was the WTA’s chief executive when it adopted the benefits.
Still, assisted reproduction is widely available in the Saudi kingdom, though it is typically limited to married women. “In practice, there hasn’t been any misalignment,” Ms. Archer said in March, a few months before she resigned. The Saudis “were very interested, from the beginning.”
Riyadh has hosted the WTA finals for the past two years, at a cost to Saudi Arabia of about $25 million per year. The kingdom’s sports ministry decided not to renew its three-year contract once it expires after this year’s finals, in November. But the WTA says the maternity fund has not been affected by the sports ministry’s decision.
The WTA would not say how much the fund pays or how much the Saudis have invested. A representative for the Saudi public investment fund declined to comment about the maternity fund.
‘We Kind of Went Through It Together’
Once the fund and ranking protections were announced, players felt more comfortable arranging fertility procedures. Ms. Stephens started getting more questions.
One player who sought her out was Beatriz Haddad Maia, 30, the top-ranked Brazilian player, who decided to go through with egg freezing. Among her challenges was a ban on exercise during the period leading up to egg retrieval, a pause that felt “super strange,” she said. Professional tennis players train for hours a day, but exercise — particularly core exercises that are important in the torso-rotating sport of tennis — can lead to complications in the days leading up to the procedure.
Desirae Krawczyk, a 32-year-old doubles champion, and her boyfriend had discussed egg freezing, but she always found a reason to delay. She said the fund provided $20,000 covering the entire process, with some money left over, which helped her decision. (The WTA said players can apply for grants until they reach a lifetime maximum.)
Retrieving and freezing her eggs was an “investment,” she said. “You don’t want to think back and be like, ‘Oh, I should have done that.’”
She talked to Ms. Stephens and even went to the same doctor. Two of her friends, Sabrina Santamaria and Giuliana Olmos, both doubles players and both married, also went to that doctor.
“We kind of went through it together,” said Ms. Olmos, 33, who froze embryos she created with her husband, with the fund covering about 70 percent of the process. “If we needed help with the shots or the doses or anything, you had someone there who was going through the same thing.”
Ms. Olmos said she respected players who returned to play after having a baby — such as Serena Williams and a few other top-ranked players. Ms. Olmos has made almost $2 million in prize money since 2018, but that amount also helps cover expenses like travel, coaching and physical therapy. Paying for child care and extra hotel rooms to take a baby on the road would cost too much, she said.
The five-time Grand Slam winner Maria Sharapova waited to have a child until her career was over.
“My mom had me when she was very young, and we formed such a close friendship,” Ms. Sharapova said. “I always thought I’d be a young mom. I knew that as I got better in tennis that wouldn’t be realistic.”
She won Wimbledon at 17, and made $38 million in prize money from 2004 to 2020, retiring at age 32. In addition to having her son, she also started investing in fertility companies. One, Cofertility, provides egg freezing free to women willing to donate some of their eggs.
Taking the Risk
Ms. Linette returned to Poland in October for her egg retrieval.
Along with the anxieties any woman might have — the discomfort, a fear of needles — she agonized over whether the medications she was taking would skew her mandatory drug testing. Tennis players can be punished if they test positive for something prohibited by the sport’s antidoping policy, even if they didn’t intend to take the banned substance. The people at her fertility clinic weren’t familiar with tennis’s antidoping procedures, increasing the chance for a mistake.
“Without these supplements, I can’t go through with the procedure,” Ms. Linette said. “I possibly can never get pregnant. So it’s such a massive dilemma.”
Eventually she decided to take the risk.
She had been told the egg retrieval would be uncomfortable, but she did not anticipate the stabbing pain in her ovaries afterward. Doctors told her not to try to play tennis right away — an unnecessary warning as she could barely get out of bed.
“I have found this absolutely newfound admiration for women that go through those cycles over and over,” Ms. Linette said.
About five weeks later, she finally felt ready to push herself in practice again. She could run, she could serve. Then in late December, the tennis world reconvened in Oceania for a group of six tournaments culminating in the Australian Open, one of the sport’s four Grand Slam events.
Ms. Linette’s ovaries had been hurting. With a Grand Slam tournament coming soon, she wanted to make sure she could play through the pain.
She checked in with a doctor, but she also texted Ms. Stephens to ask for her thoughts. Ms. Stephens, as usual, was happy to help.
