Taylor Townsend said she had about 80 pounds to lose after giving birth to her son, a number that changed the way she thought about training, recovery and what it would take to come back to tennis. In 2026, she reached the fourth round of the US Open and was set to face Aryna Sabalenka, putting her return and the road that led to it back in the spotlight.
Townsend, 29, has spent years speaking openly about weight and body shaming in a sport that first judged her when she was still a junior. At 16, she was the No. 1 junior player in the world, but the USTA told her to focus on fitness and kept her from receiving its usual support for the 2012 US Open. She later said the experience made her feel judged for both her body and her identity, even as she won the 2012 Australian Open junior singles title and the 2012 Australian Open junior doubles title. During that period, she said she was diagnosed with anemia.
Townsend returned to that history in a 2021 essay for The Players’ Tribune, where she questioned why the USTA kept raising concerns about her weight after her doctor cleared her to play. She wrote that being questioned about her weight became part of her life as a tennis player and shaped how she saw herself, adding: “I was fat, and I was Black, so they took away my dream. Or at least they tried.”
Motherhood changed the problem in plain numbers. Townsend gave birth to Adyn in March 2021 and returned to professional tennis in 2022, first thinking she needed to lose only 20 pounds. Instead, she said the real figure was closer to 80 pounds, and that realization hit hard. “It was very difficult,” she told the US Open. “For the longest time I was like, ‘Oh I’ve just got to lose 20 pounds’, and I struggled with that. But then after having him and I had 80 [pounds] to lose, I was like, ‘Holy crap. I’ve never had to do this before’.”
What changed next was not just the scale, but the method. Townsend said her fitness approach shifted after motherhood, with more attention to recovery and less strain on her body. That matters now because her current US Open run is not just another deep tournament stretch; it is the latest proof that she has rebuilt her game on terms she did not always control. The unanswered question is not whether she can compete with the best. It is how far this version of Townsend can go once fitness, confidence and the work of returning after birth finally line up.
