Having not played the entire 2020 season, Bianca Andreescu will return to the tour at the 2021 Australian Open. After withdrawing from the 2019 WTA Finals due to a knee injury, Andreescu hasn’t played a single match in the last 12 months. Despite the tour’s resumption this year, Andreescu announced in September that she would take the rest of the season off to focus on her health and training.

Recently, World No.7 posted a video on her Twitter feed to express her gratitude to all the people who made the player’s return possible on the court. Talking about feeling downhearted when the tour got suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic, Andreescu hailed tennis as a unifying sport.

Bianca Andreescu posts heartfelt message

In the short video, Andreescu revealed that apart from sports forming a huge part of her life, it also solved her purpose of inspiring people. Last year she achieved her childhood dream of winning her maiden Grand Slam at the US Open. With the victory, Andreescu became the first Canadian tennis player to win a Grand Slam singles title.

“Tennis is very unifying. I think 2020 really expressed that even more. Especially for me, I saw how down I got when the tour got canceled and everything and we weren’t able to watch sports. Sport is a very big thing in my life. It also collides with being able to inspire others and to me it’s very important and if I can do just a little bit of that then it gives me another purpose to play this sport.” said Andreescu. 

The tour’s resumption would not have been possible without the effort of the tournament organizers, ball kids, and the healthcare workers. All the ATP and WTA tournaments followed strict social distancing protocols and kept players under a bio-secure bubble to prevent the outbreak of the virus.

The Canadian has been training in Dubai over the last few weeks as the conditions are akin to the hot weather in Australia. Having made her debut at Melbourne Park last year, Andreescu got ousted in the second round.