At 23 years old, Melanie Oudin has been through more in her life than many other people her age, professional athletes or otherwise.
The Georgia native burst into the international spotlight as a 17-year-old when she beat Maria Sharapova to reach the quarterfinals of the 2009 US Open three months after making a surprise run to the fourth round of Wimbledon.
Since then, she’s suffered and recovered from a muscle-damaging condition in her arms caused by over-training and dehydration, undergone two heart procedures and had a growth removed from her eye. Her ranking has dropped below 300, down from a career-high of No. 31 five years ago.
“It’s been tough. People say I should be so happy to be back and that tennis is so little compared to life in general, but I want to keep playing and keep doing well,” Oudin said after Thursday’s win against Yafan Wang in the second round of the 2015 US Open Qualifying Tournament. “I was going through a lot mentally and physically because it was a lot to deal with. There’s a lot of things I had to push through to keep staying positive, but I know this will make me stronger.”
Once billed as the next teenage superstar of American women’s tennis, Oudin missed more than four months in 2013 and 2014 recovering from rhabdomyolysis, during which time her arms became swollen and her muscles began degrading. The condition caused Oudin to lose all the strength in her arms, to the point where she wasn’t able to train or lift weights.
In addition, for the past two-and-a-half years Oudin had also been battling a heart condition called arrhythmia, which caused her heart to beat irregularly, often very quickly and for prolonged periods of time.
Oudin initially thought it was stress-related. Doctors later misdiagnosed it as a series of panic attacks until she experienced it again while she was in the doctor’s office and they determined it was arrhythmia. When she was tested during an episode, her resting heart rate was 230 beats per minute. The normal resting heart rate for an adult is between 60 and 100.
“In the beginning, it never lasted that long and I would get it to go away by laying down and taking deep breaths,” Oudin said. “It felt like my heart would beat out of my chest and I’d start to lose all the feeling in my arms and legs. I’d feel a little light-headed and my throat would hurt and my back would hurt. I’d look down and see my chest pounding, and I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was me just being nervous or getting tight. Then when they told me it was panic attacks, I didn’t want to tell anybody. I didn’t want people to know I was having panic attacks.
“None of the tests showed what I had because the only way to catch it is to do an EKG or take my vitals while it is happening, and it only happened when I was playing tennis. The mental part was probably the worst. I was freaking out because I knew it had something to do with my heart and I could tell how fast my heart was going.“
In the third qualifying round of the US Open last summer, Oudin experienced the symptoms again. After losing in straight sets to Ashleigh Barty, Oudin couldn’t get the beating under control. For the next eight hours, her heart wouldn’t stop pounding. Surgeons removed a piece of tissue next to her heart in November 2014, but the problem persisted. A second procedure performed in Georgia in March removed even more tissue, and now she hopes she’s back on track.
“It was one of the simplest heart procedures you can have, but it was still a heart procedure,” she said. “Years ago, it would be an open heart surgery.”
Oudin defeated Elitsa Kostova, 6-3, 7-5, in the first round of the US Open Qualifying tournament on Tuesday and she rallied from a set down to beat Wang -- who defeated Oudin in the Wimbledon qualifiers in June -- 6-7, 6-3, 7-6, on Thursday.
“The fact that I’ve been out for nine months and getting a win like that gives me a lot of confidence,” said Oudin, who also underwent surgery to remove a tumor in her left eye, a result of spending too much time in the sun. “It definitely took a lot out of me, but I had been losing those matches that close lately, so it’s good to get a match like that under my belt. There are a lot of positive things to take from that.”
Next up is a final-round qualifying match with fellow American Jessica Pegula. Friends on and off the court, the pair trained together in Charleston, S.C., earlier in the year and practiced with each other again before their first-round matches this week. Oudin hopes she can channel some of the positive Flushing Meadows feelings from previous years to get back into the main draw.
“I have some really great memories here,” said Oudin, who said she’s at about 75 percent, mentally and physically. “I have great memories here and I love the US Open. Beating Maria [Sharapova] was something I’ll never forget. It seems like a long time ago, but then every year I come back and I feel like I still remember everything that happened and I get flashbacks of great memories. I need to use that to my benefit to know that I can do it again.”
