Caty McNally on comebacks, full-circle moments and partnering Krejcikova

Note: Throughout December, wtatennis.com will be running a series of interviews with players who are poised to make a mark in 2026 after impressive comebacks or breakthroughs in 2025.

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For a set at Wimbledon this year, Caty McNally had the measure of Iga Swiatek. Chip-and-charging, carving her slice through the grass and putting away swashbuckling volleys, she threatened a second-round upset as she took the first set from 4-1 down.

Swiatek recovered to win 5-7, 6-2, 6-1 and go on to capture her first Wimbledon crown, but that match was her toughest test of the fortnight, and the only set she dropped. For McNally -- who had partnered Swiatek to the 2018 Roland Garros girls' doubles title -- it marked a full-circle tournament, and the delayed fulfilment of a childhood dream.

"Little me would be so proud," she later posted on Instagram. That wasn't just about getting to play on Centre Court against a multiple major champion, but how she'd got there.

Two years previously, McNally had received direct entry into the Wimbledon main draw for the first time. She'd broken into the Top 100 at the end of 2022, risen to a career high of No. 54 by May 2023 and was halfway through what was shaping up to be her first full tour-level season -- the one in which she started ticking off those childhood dreams.

It didn't pan out like that.

"Wimbledon 2023 was definitely the lowest point of my career," McNally said with a grimace via video call from her home in Cincinnati. "I just remember playing there, at such an amazing place, and there was no joy. I played the grass season in a lot of pain, I was very unhappy and I was just so consumed by having tape all over my body."

McNally went down 6-1, 6-3 to British wild card Jodie Burrage. She would not play again for over half a year.

The American's woes had started two months before Wimbledon. After her first-round win in Rome over Dalila Spiteri, she noticed that her elbow was having a hard time fully extending. But she thought it was just one of those aches and pains she had to manage as a professional, not anything serious -- and kept playing through it, even when warming up serves and overheads became increasingly difficult.

A week later, the elbow wasn't even her priority concern. McNally tore her hamstring during her semifinal win over Katie Volynets at the Paris WTA 125. She was forced to withdraw from the final, and then from Roland Garros.

"It all kind of started spiralling in this moment," she said.

McNally stayed in Paris to do her hamstring rehab, which went smoothly, and returned to action on grass. But despite the break, the elbow was still painful. In the summer, she was diagnosed with an issue in her ulnar collateral ligament -- an injury more common in baseball players like Tommy John than tennis players. But the diagnosis was only the start of another arduous journey to get it fixed.

"I decided to reach out to doctors, and that was a whole process in itself," McNally said. "Just, you know ... everyone has different ways of going about things and different opinions. Someone tells you the likelihood of comeback with this treatment is this percent. Someone else tells you a different percent of whether it's going to actually work. It's frustrating. I learned a lot."

Determined to avoid surgery, McNally initially opted for platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections. But after a six-month layoff, McNally was only able to play three tournaments at the start of 2024 before the elbow began to flare up to the point where she was unable to accelerate on her serve, or even straighten her elbow. An MRI showed that the ligament had torn again.

"I was told I was never going to need surgery," she said. "And then the doctor was like, 'You should start looking at surgeons.' Mentally, that was really difficult because I felt like I wasted eight months of my career when I was at such a good point. I didn't want to jump into surgery or anything right off the bat. You never want to. You want to try to take the conservative route.

"But it came down to the point where it's like, you can keep doing the conservative route over and over again. But every six to eight months you're going to have to retest it. And then it could hurt again. That wasn't worth it for me."

McNally underwent surgery, and made her second comeback in November 2024 with a ranking languishing outside the Top 1,000. This time round, she won her third tournament back, an ITF W50 in Tampa, Florida -- a confidence boost that set her up for a remarkable climb back into the Top 100 over the course of 2025. 

The true full-circle moment at Wimbledon wasn't the Swiatek match, but a coincidental first-round draw that pitted McNally against Burrage -- the opponent who had defeated her at her low point in 2023 -- again. This time, she won 6-3, 6-1.

"I was like, you can't make this up," she recalled on seeing the draw. "This is crazy. To be able to go out there and win that first round was incredible. Winning a set off Iga was incredible -- I can kind of give myself a pat on the back for that -- and I watched her kick butt for the rest of the tournament."

A 10-match winning streak followed as McNally swept the Newport WTA 125 and Evansville ITF W100 titles in July -- the former with a 2-6, 6-4, 6-2 defeat of Tatjana Maria in the final, a fellow serve-and-volleying, chip-and-charging disruptor in which McNally initially found herself in the rare position of being beaten to the net.

"I truly enjoyed that match," McNally said with satisfaction. "It was true grass-court tennis, that's for sure."

For six weeks after surgery, McNally's right arm was locked in a brace and she was unable to even put her hair up. But the worst doubts came later, "to the middle and end of rehab," when she could hit again -- but, instinctively holding back, couldn't imagine being able to let go and unleash as she had before. Despite all the low points, though, she feels the experience has only benefited her. Her 2025 goal wasn't to get back to the Top 100, but to stay healthy. That meant a renewed emphasis on recovery, injury prevention and learning about her body.

"I feel like I've always done things pretty professionally, but I've taken it to a whole new level," McNally said. "I thought I was strong before, but this is a whole new level of strength that I feel like I've unlocked."

That's not just to do with her elbow, but how her entire body is inter-connected. In retrospect, McNally feels that in 2023, her body simply hadn't been strong enough to bear the load of her new, higher-level schedule.

"The body in tennis is a chain, so you have to strengthen the whole thing," she explained. "A massive thing is making sure my shoulders are as strong as they can be, and super stable. Anything that's going to help the shoulder is going to go down the chain to the elbow, to the wrist. And it comes from the ground up, so I've learned a lot about not just my elbow, but my feet -- trying to make my ankles more mobile, my hips, all of that. So the power can just come from those big areas, like my hips -- and then my arm can just be like a whip, and not hold so much tension."

With her doubts vanquished and a renewed perspective from being given what she thinks of as a "second chance," McNally is looking forward to what 2026 holds -- and in particular, an opportunity that landed unexpectedly in her inbox this autumn. McNally's game style has already helped her to become one of the standout doubles players of the younger generation on tour, with eight titles and two US Open finals under her belt already.

This hasn't gone unnoticed: none other than Barbora Krejcikova, a seven-time Slam doubles champion and two-time Slam singles champion, dropped her a message asking to pair up next year. McNally didn't hesitate to reply to a player whose career path she's long found inspiring.

"She's a legend," McNally said. "I'm honored to play with her. She's honestly been one of my role models. You know, she had doubles success first. In a lot of my career, especially in juniors and maybe early on in my pro career, I had a lot more success in doubles. And she's just one of those people that shows you, hey, you can go out there and win a Grand Slam in singles, too.

"I don't want to just be labelled as a doubles player. Like, no, I'm a tennis player. I play both. I've had more success in doubles early on. But I can still play singles, and I still want to win Grand Slams in singles. She has a lot of experience in that, and I'm looking forward to learning from her."