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The last time Romanian cult favorite Patricia Maria Tig played a Grand Slam was Wimbledon in 2021.

She lost in the first round, in three sets, to Daria Kasatkina.

Then, she went missing for more than a year.

But the 28-year-old is scheduled to return to the top level in January. She’s entered the tuneup event in Hobart, and then the main event at the Australian Open with a protected ranking of No. 65.

That’s more than a year and a half away from the top of the game.

From that loss to Kasatkina until she turned up at a $15,000 ITF tournament in Bulgaria right after this year’s US Open – more than 14 months – Tig was MIA.

Of course, she won it. In both singles and doubles.

In a sense, she’s starting all over again.

But Tig is no stranger to that. She’s done it before.

’23 Return?: Margarita Gasparyan

Comeback No. 1 in Cancun

In April 2019, Tig reappeared after an absence of a year and a half to play a $15K tournament in Cancun, Mexico.

She had a great reason – so many injuries to heal. And, more importantly, she was off on maternity leave after having daughter Sofia in Nov. 2018.

She and her husband/coach Răzvan Sabău packed up the baby and moved their operations to Mexico. She played nine tournaments in 10 weeks – sort of a return-to-action boot camp in a place where you could win two matches in qualifying, lose in the first round of the main draw and look at a cheque south of $150.

But she got to Wimbledon qualifying, where she lost a heartbreaker to Paula Badosa in the first round.

A few weeks later, she went from the qualifying to the final on clay, at home in Bucharest, and finally got back on the computer at No. 264.

(All of her pertinent information is wiped off the WTA website. But she ended up better than she was before having her baby – peaking at No. 56 after she won the WTA in Istanbul and then made the third round in the fall 2020 edition of Roland Garros).

The wild ride of Patricia Maria Tig

Comeback No. 2 on right now

After that long break, Tig has embarked on another comeback.

But it’s a different story this time.

As she laid out on her Instagram account last month, she’s doing it without her husband/coach – who now is her former husband/coach.

Tig wrote that she and Sabău ended their personal and professional relationship a year and a half ago.

Then – Tig and family on the practice court at Indian Wells – just days before the event was the first casualty of the pandemic in 2020. She’s back – but as a solo act.

So this comeback will be infinitely more challenging, as daughter Sofia turns four in a few weeks.

Including the impressive return in Varna in September, Tig has gone 17-4 on the ITF circuit in singles, qualifying and main draw matches combined.

She fell out of the top 1,000 after winning that event (No. 1,148), but then moved on to the Futures factories in Santa Margherita di Pula for two weeks at the $25K level, and then Antalya, Turkey for two weeks at the $15K level.

Tig has her ranking inside the top 800, and is saving those protected-ranking slots for 2023, clearly.

As we repeat far too often because it’s so true: tennis players are persistent, resilient creatures.