After pondering retirement, New Zealand’s Marina Erakovic isn’t just contempt with staging another comeback from injury. She is also in the process of releasing an album.
A former top 40 player, the 29-year-old has been hampered by a back injury throughout 2017 and is yet to play on the tour this year. The last time she played a WTA tournament was at the Quebec Open in September where she fell in round two to Alison Van Uytvanck. As a result of her absence, she now finds herself ranked 224th in the world.
“I will not really have a gauge [my return] until I’ve done a few runs over the next couple of weeks,” Erakovic told stuff.co.nz.
“For me, it’s been just rest, my back feels better now, but I’m not travelling or sitting on a plane for a long time.
“This is not a quick fix, it’s taking time and it’s going to be baby steps.”
Despite being sidelined from action, the New Zealand No.1 has managed to keep herself busy. Away from the court, Erakovic enjoys making music. Recently she released a six-song EP call incognito under the name of ‘The Mad Era’ on iTunes and Spotify. Tennis is part of the inspiration for her music. One of her songs, Pleasantville, is inspired by her experiences at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells. She has only ever managed to win one main draw match at the tournament in eight attempts.
“It’s about Indian Wells and I wrote that there,” she said.
“I call Indian Wells Pleasantville because everything there is so perfect.
“I would do these songs in my hotel room and would save the projects. I didn’t know what to call them, so I’d always call it after the city I was in.”
Erakovic has no intention to halt her music plans when she returns to the tour. She has already revealed her ambition to launch an album by the end of this year or at the start of the next. As for her musical pseudonym, she chose to have one in order for listeners to judge her solely on the music and not her tennis career.
“That’s probably why I did it the way I did. put it out under a different name,” she explained.
“I wanted to see if anyone liked it for what it was, without know it was me, the tennis player.
“Also, there are a couple of songs there that are personal and it’s tough when people know you to put something out there about yourself.”
There is currently no start date about when Erakovic will return to the tour. Her target is to be ready in time by the end of March, ruling herself out of the duo of Premier American hard court tournaments next month.
Erakovic currently has one WTA title to her name from the 2013 Memphis Open.
