Timea Bacsinszky reveals nightmare relationship with Dad

The 25-year-old from Belmont-sur-Lausanne in Switzerland said of her father Igor, “he doesn’t deserve to have kids” for the way he treated her in a heartbreaking interview with the BBC.

Bacsinszky called her father a “control freak” and revealed how she had to take strong action to pull her mother Suzanne away from her father, a tennis coach from Romania, as the sport tore her family apart.

'I kind of forced my mum to divorce because I told her okay it's unliveable,” she said.

“You cannot live that way, it's not possible."

On her extremely tough childhood in Switzerland, Bacsinszky said she was left desperate to quit tennis with the immense pressure on her from her father.

"I was living in Switzerland and seeing all those other kids around me who had nice families, and then me on the other side,” she said.

"I am my own boss, I own my own life, it was quite difficult for me earlier to understand that.

“When you are the kid of a parent, who is that kind of pushy parent, who wants to live his dream through your life, it's difficult."

Bacsinszky says she first picked up a racquet at the age of just three and was constantly pushed hard by her father to succeed in the sport.

“I have been a kid of like a syndrome of pushy parents,” Bacsinszky said in an interview at Indian Wells earlier in the season.

“It’s happening a lot, especially in tennis, because especially in women’s tennis, because for sure, as a woman, as a young girl, you can never go against the power of the dad. You have no money or nothing.

“Actually, you have no chance to get out of it. Or you tank your tennis career and you lose matches.

“I had to win matches because otherwise my parents would fight. I had to manage to win the match because otherwise it would not be okay.”