Andrea Petkovic says that she has been so unhappy this year because her mother has been ill that she has been thinking of quitting all together. After falling 6-0, 6-0 to Carla Suarez Navarro in Zhuhai, this week, the German broke down in tears.

"I was sort of questioning the tennis thing," Petkovic told the WTA Insider. "I felt like maybe this was really the year for me to figure out if I want to play tennis because there are so many other things that I enjoy doing. I feel like somehow this was the first year I felt like I was losing time [playing tennis]. And it's so strange because I've never felt that. Tennis was always something I chose and something I wanted to do and this year not so much anymore. I really have to figure out if I want to keep playing."

The 28-year-old said that this year she thought about spending more time with her family after her mother fell ill, rather than being on the road all the time. The world No. 24 has not gone deep at a tournament since early April, when she reached the semifinals in Charleston. Since then, she hasn’t won three matches in a row.

"It just felt like torture. Every minute of it. It's just been the past two or three months, I just sort of lost the passion for tennis," Petkovic said. "When I was at home I was feeling really happy. And the minute I went on tour I just sort of felt depressed. Really depressed in a way that I didn't want to get out of bed at all. It was a difficult year for my family. I wanted to be at home.

"But because I'm a professional and I'm German, I still went and did all the practices and everything I had to do. It wasn't like I just didn't do it. I wasn't going to just play the matches. I still practiced three hours a day. I still did my gym, I still did my workouts, I still did my fitness, I still went to the physios every day. I was still being professional with all this inside of me."