MONTREAL, October 18, 2017 (Press Release)

Tennis Canada announced Tuesday that Rebecca Marino from Vancouver will be making a return to competition after being away from the game for nearly five years. In February 2013, Marino decided to step away from tennis after revealing her battle with depression. Now at 26 years years old, she will play her first tournaments in Saguenay and Toronto beginning this weekend.

“I’m excited to come back and play in Canada, especially in tournaments that I participated in a number of times in my career. I made the decision to return to professional tennis a couple of months ago and started training again during the first week of September. It’s been a pretty short training schedule, but I’m doing it because I enjoy it,” Marino said. “I don’t have any ranking goals or result goals right now, I just want to go in and enjoy the process and come at it from a different place than I was before. I want to be happy to be on court and compete, that’s all that matters to me.”

In 2011, Marino reached a career-high WTA ranking of no. 38. She won three Challengers in a row in the fall of 2010, including the 2010 Saguenay National Bank Challenger. The following year, she reached the final of the WTA event in Memphis and the third round at Roland-Garros.

“I am very happy that Rebecca is coming back to competition. She is doing it for herself and that’s what is most important,” said Sylvain Bruneau, captain of the Canadian Fed Cup team and head of the national women’s program. “She missed tennis and she wanted to experience a different ending then the first one. She has come a long way in the past few years and this evolution will allow her to approach the life of a professional tennis player differently.”