McHale shares how Vampire Diaries got her through shutdown

When the TENNIS.com Podcast caught up with Christina McHale she was in Atlanta quarantining with her sister Lauren and Ryan Harrison. Luckily she had her racquets with her and has those two quality hitting partners on hand to start training again.

Now back home in New Jersey, McHale will ramp up her training efforts as she prepares for a full World TeamTennis season for the San Diego Aviators followed by the WTA tour restart in mid-August. The US Open will take place without fans, and the Cincinnati Open will move to Flushing Meadows. With her Top-100 ranking and proximity to New York, McHale should feature at both events.

But how did the 28-year-old get through the lengthy tour shutdown?

Vampire Diaries, that's how.

"I watched the whole Vampire Diaries series which, let me put this in perspective for you, it's eight seasons of 22 episodes each and I watched that in two months," she said. "I was so into it. That really helped pass a lot of the time."

The American also played puzzles, scrabble, tried tie-dye, did some schoolwork and improved her cooking skills—which have moved up from non-existent to eggs for breakfast and chicken dishes.

The Vampire Diaries is a supernatural teen drama that began in 2009 and stars Nina Dobrev (as Elena), Paul Wesley (as Stefan) and Ian Somerhalder (as Damon).

"I cried during the last episode," McHale said. "It was so touching. I started off as Team Stefan and then midway through, I changed to Team Damon and then obviously, I wanted them to end up together. But then the way that Stephan's sacrifice for Damon, it was just, it was very moving."

You'd have to watch the show (which wrapped in 2017) to really understand the complicated love triangle dynamics. What you can understand now is that Wesley happens to be a diehard tennis fan.

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The 37-year-old actor has attended the US Open, Roland Garros and Indian Wells, and has a friendship with Gael Monfils.

"I started following [Monfils] matches," Wesley said on Tennis Channel Live. "And then it went from following every one of his matches to watching every single match. Then it went to like becoming a fanatic and waking up at 3 in the morning to watch the matches that were taking place in Europe or the Middle East.

"I got hit with the bug. I just love it."

When the tours do start up again with fans allowed on site, Wesley and McHale really need to cross paths.

"I saw that on the Tennis Channel so that was really cool," McHale said. "But after just getting into it, I found out that he's a tennis fan."