American tennis star Taylor Townsend has heartbreakingly opened up about why she doesn’t travel with her son on the WTA Tour and tough sacrifices she and her fellow tennis stars have to make. Townsend, 29, has enjoyed a successful run at the French Open. She made it through three rounds of qualifiers to reach the first round of singles, while she is still in both the women’s doubles and mixed doubles competitions, with six combined wins already in Paris.
Townsend is the world No. 2 in doubles and has previously reached as high as 47 in the world in singles, banking £4.4million in prize money across her glittering career. She is the reigning Wimbledon and Australian Open doubles champion but has gone through plenty of trials and tribulations to get to this point.
She gave birth to her son, Adyn Aubrey, on March 14, 2021. He is now four and going to camp in America for the first time, with Townsend visibly emotional at missing such a big milestone in his life.
Townsend was teary-eyed on Instagram as she said: “I’m trying to keep this together, but today is a big day! Today is Adyn’s first camp, and I’m missing him.”
Speaking to Tennis Channel, she then opened up on the “hard” struggle of being on the road and explained exactly why she does not want to bring her son on tour.
Townsend was praised for “making it count” by host Prakash Amitraj and ensuring she reached the latter stages of the competition if she has to spend time away from Adyn, before replying: “I mean, for real because this life is not easy.
“A lot of people ask me, ‘Why don’t you travel with him?’ I’m like, ‘S***, this is hard for us!’ It’s really hard for us, I mean we jump time zones going hotel to hotel, new place to new place, week after week, like, living out of a suitcase.
“No home-cooked meals. You eat out every night, or Uber Eats, or whatever. This is a hard life for us! So it’s very difficult for them.
“So I make the sacrifice, personally I’m like, ‘I’d rather you have your routine and be home, and have some solid structure.’ That’s important to me for his development.
“It’s a hard sacrifice that I make but you know, he’s a great kid so. I feel like it’s paying off and like I said, I just pray that he knows why I’m doing it and you know, I’m working to build a better life for us later down the road.”
