Monica Puig: "My last three years have been dark"

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Monica Puig has had to struggle with serious depression in recent years. The Puerto Rican tennis player, who has won two WTA titles during her career, experienced the most difficult moment of her life just when she seemed ready to explode definitively.

At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Puig won the gold medal and the ninth overall medalist for that delegation. With the feat, she also became the first Latin American champion in the women's singles discipline, and is the only unseeded female player to win the gold medal since the reintroduction of tennis in 1988.

“My last three years have been dark. I didn’t have a focus and was very entangled in a lot of things and I neglected myself. I didn’t pay attention to valuable things or those that interested me and just pleasing others,” she told La Nacion, an Argentine daily newspaper.

“I stopped going out with friends and family and was always on the phone and reading comments on social networks, which I did pay attention to and could have fifteen positive messages, but I read only one negative and that sank me.

I was too bad,” she added. “I want to be very sincere because I know that athletes serve as an image for youth and I want them to know that it is not all rosy. When I’m fine, I’m not afraid to compete with anyone.

You put Serena Williams in front, I will respect her. But I value myself and I know I can beat her. I believed that in every game I had a chance to win."