To say Oceane Dodin, a French tennis player ranked outside of the top 400 in the world standings wasn’t expecting her return to the sport after a lengthy absence to make global news is an understatement.
The 28-year-old took a step back from the game in December 2024 in a bid to seek treatment for an inner-ear condition that had been troubling her for the past 10 years of her playing career.
Dodin made her return to the court at the end of September at a small ITF tournament in Reims, away from the spotlight on her high-flying peers competing in the high-ranking events that make up the post-US Open Asian swing. By contrast, she earned her first win against a player ranked 414th in the world.
But days later, Dodin found herself at the centre of a media swirl after sharing in an interview in her native France that she had, during her time on the sidelines, become the first active player to have undergone breast enhancement surgery.
‘Yes and no,’ Dodin told Daily Mail Sport when asked if she had expected to garner attention in such an unorthodox manner. ‘Yes, because in this sport, it’s not like usual, nobody has done it before, so I knew people and journalists are gonna talk about it.
‘But no, because, I mean, for me, it’s nothing crazy. It’s just boobs, it’s nothing. So I was like, “maybe people are going talk about it because it’s new, and because it’s unusual” – but not that much.’
Against a contemporary landscape where oversharing information has become the norm, Dodin’s admission that she had taken the decision to have the surgery during her time out really isn’t anything special. But in tennis, there is no precedent.
The only frame of reference for similar discussions is the journey undergone by Simona Halep, with the Romanian star outspoken about how her 2009 breast reduction allowed her to level up her game, reducing the discomfort she felt while playing.
Halep went on to win the French Open, and Wimbledon a decade after her surgery. By applying the same fixed logic, some wondered, wouldn’t Dodin be hampering her own career?
The reality is far removed from Halep’s situation, Dodin stresses, with the player’s surgeon knowledgeable about the sport and well aware of her desire to return to the form that saw her ranked inside the top 50 at her peak.
Dodin pointed out in her interview with RMC Sport that she hadn’t opted for ‘watermelons’, and laughed recalling the male journalist’s concern for whether she might have torpedoed her on-court future.
‘He asked me, “but can you still play?”,’ she recalls. ‘And I was like, “of course, yes. I didn’t put like, everything crazy.”
‘Of course, (they’re) big, but it’s not like I can’t play, you know? And there are some tennis players who have bigger boobs than me, and they’re still playing. Just mine are fake, that’s it.’
Dodin’s openness discussing the surgery speaks to the player’s desire to be seen for more than just her life on the tennis tour.
‘For me, it’s good to talk about something else about tennis, because yes, we are tennis players, but we are also normal people,’ she adds.
‘In normal life, people are doing (the surgery) also, and I don’t understand why we are judging something that normal people are doing.
‘I’m feeling better in my body now, and I think in sport in general, people always think that we are just like robots, just tennis players. But we have private lives, we have friends, we have different things.
‘So I think for me, it’s important to talk about everything.’
The enforced break has had other added benefits for Dodin too. Although frustrated when a strong 2024 which saw the player reach the fourth round of the Australian Open was brought to a disappointing end, Dodin has been able to take valuable time to recover and come back more motivated ahead of 2026.
Picking up wins on home soil, where she has been happy to take a break from the globe-trotting grind of the tour, Dodin’s main goal – aside from a bid to crack the top 100 – is to keep in good health.
‘(To) just to be happy, to travel a little bit more now, and just to take things positively, and try to enjoy every moment,’ she adds.
And perhaps, to attract a whole array of different headlines too.
