2024-04-19 07:10:04
Last year’s memories are still vivid. She reached the Grand Slam final, even had a match point, but still lost. Belarusian tennis player Aryna Sabalenková remembered Karolína Muchová in Stuttgart, who ended her clay pilgrimage at the French Open last season. Now she faces another Czech challenge in the form of Markéta Vondroušová in the quarterfinals of the German event.
Just to remind. A year ago in Paris, Mucho pulled off an unprecedented stunt. Like an unseeded tennis player returning from injury, she flew through the spider to the finals.
In the battle for it, she outplayed Sabalenkova even though she was losing 2:5 in the third set and faced a match point.
And it is this dot after last year’s clay season that still lies in Belarus’s stomach, even though new tournaments on orange clay are ahead.
“It still hurts. I was so close. If I get to the same stage of the tournament, 5-2 and 30-0 in the third, then I know it won’t happen again. I’ll just have it in my head that I won’t let it happen again “She doesn’t lose in tennis, but she learns,” said Sabalenková.
Even though she is a well-known early hitter and has two Grand Slams from the Australian hard surface, it certainly doesn’t mean that she doesn’t like clay.
“Rather the opposite. I enjoy it. And here in Stuttgart it’s an ideal start, you kind of get used to the clay environment, while it’s quite fast,” the world number two praises herself.
That the local conditions suit her can be seen this year as well. He is already in the quarter-finals in Germany. At the same time, she wasn’t going through a very good time a few weeks ago.
In Miami, she had to cope with the loss of an ex-boyfriend who committed suicide in Florida. Nevertheless, she decided to play there and said goodbye to the tournament only after the third round.
While in America she refused to participate in press conferences for the reasons mentioned above, this time she already spoke to journalists.
They also asked her an unusual question. How does she explain that there are so many successful tennis players from Eastern Europe on the WTA circuit.
“Perhaps because we all grew up in difficult conditions. We are true fighters, a little rough,” Sabalenková let herself be heard.
Now she is waiting for another fighter, Czech Markéta Vondroušová, who swept Donna Vekicová from Croatia in the first round and Anastasia Potapova from Russia in the round of 16.
The duel is scheduled for Friday after 2 p.m. and the newspaper Aktuálně.cz will bring it to you in an online report.