During her best years Bartoli was consistently in the top 10, ascending as high as No. 7. She was a powerful player who dictated points with an aggressive style that mitigated her relative lack of court coverage. It was a successful formula, but eventually her right shoulder became so inflamed that she could not play more than 45 minutes without searing pain, she said. Five weeks after her greatest triumph at Wimbledon (she was also a runner-up there in 2007), she stepped aside.

But what followed in retirement was much worse than any shoulder pain.

Bartoli described an 18-month period in which a boyfriend tormented her into dropping unhealthy amounts of weight, beginning in the autumn of 2015. According to Bartoli, the man, whom she did not name, harped on her weight and pressured her into a diet that she knew was unhealthy. He would point to slim women and mention how they looked better than Bartoli. She said her weight plummeted to 114 pounds from 165.

“But I did it because he was just, every single day, telling me I was too heavy and too fat and whatever and whatever,” she said. “So I started a diet that just never ends, basically.”

Perhaps weakened from that ordeal, Bartoli said, she contracted a virus from a mosquito while traveling in India: a version of the H1N1, also known as swine flu. She said she had a fever of 104 degrees for 15 straight days and lost even more weight, dropping to 90 pounds.