Christina McHale tells TENNIS.com that doctors discovered she had a case of mononucleosis last fall. McHale caught a stomach virus during the Olympics in early August and thought for a while that it was what was sapping her energy, but things turned out to be more complicated.
“When I got back from the Olympics I had the stomach virus and I went to the hospital and they did a bunch of tests and they said I also had a form of colitis from something I ate. A few weeks later I said wasn’t feeling better and the doctor said ‘you should be feeling better.’ I had more tests and then they said I was at the end of mono. They thought that maybe I caught the stomach virus because my immune system was weak because of the mono.”
The 20-year-old American reached a career-high ranking of No. 24 last summer, but has fallen to No. 37. She lost her last four matches of 2012 and thinks she may have made a mistake trying to play through the illness. She did not start feeling 100 percent until November. McHale has dropped her first two matches of 2013, including a 7-6, 7-5 loss to No. 7 Li Na in Sydney.