Ten months after she thought she had played her final match, Elena Baltacha will return to the grand slam stage at the French Open on Tuesday.
The former British number one revealed at the Olympics last summer she would be having ankle surgery and may not return to competitive tennis.
Privately, worn down by more than a decade on the tour, she had decided that would be it.
Baltacha had been through more than her fair share of injury and illness troubles and did not want to endure another lengthy rehab.
But when the grind of the tennis lifestyle was not there, she realised she was not done with it after all, and eight months after the Olympics Baltacha made her return at a small event in the USA.
The 29-year-old said: “I actually retired after the Olympics. I kind of kept it to myself but I knew I’d had enough. I was going through the motions.
“If you’re not careful you find yourself getting into a grind and I just fell out of love with tennis, to be honest.
“But the things I really hated about it are the things I really missed. Packing the suitcase, going from week to week in different hotels, getting on another flight. It was really bizarre. I realised how much I love tennis.
“The biggest thing I missed was the one-on-one competition. That challenge, the ‘come ons’, that feeling when you win a match and the umpire says, ‘Game, set, match, Miss Baltacha’. You can replace that but only if you’re ready to move on.”
Baltacha is currently ranked 200th and is using her protected ranking from before her lay-off to play in the main draw.
But the Scot has not come back for a swansong and is planning to play for another three years or so, with the carrot of trying to overhaul young guns Laura Robson and Heather Watson very much at the forefront of her mind.
Ahead of her match against New Zealand’s Marina Erakovic, Baltacha said: “The more I’m in tennis, the more I realise it’s mental. I think the rehab went so well because mentally I was prepared to get on with it.
“No regrets, just grind it out, and after the first two weeks I can’t tell you what I did and how it happened, the next thing I knew I was on court playing my first match. When you’re in that state of mind, I think anything’s possible.”
There were high hopes for Robson’s first match against out-of-form Caroline Wozniacki but the former world number one was rarely threatened in a 6-3 6-2 victory.
Watson also starts her campaign today against Stefanie Voegele in her first match since being forced off the tour with glandular fever.
There was a scare for Rafael Nadal when he lost the first set against Germany’s Daniel Brands before winning in four while defending women’s champion Maria Sharapova had things much easier against Hsieh Su-wei.