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SINGAPORE – Dominika Cibulkova was riding high off the biggest title of her career on Monday, going through the media rounds to discuss her stunning run to the title at the BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore presented by SC Global. Less than 24 hours after the win, the new World No.5 was still on Cloud 9 after beating No.1 Angelique Kerber 6-3, 6-4 to win the WTA Finals and finish off an incredible comeback season.

WTA Insider caught up with Cibulkova to reflect on her Singapore win and her evolution as a gritty on-court battler:

WTA Insider: What are you most proud of that you accomplished here?
Cibulkova: That after the two losses I had, I didn’t get down on myself. They talk about me as a fighter and I proved that I am really a big fighter, because it wasn’t easy to go out there after two losses and to play against Halep in the situation it was. So this is [what] I’m really proud about. And, of course, the way I played in the final – it was really high-level tennis.

WTA Insider: Was the final your best match all week?
Cibulkova: I think I also played really well against Halep, but I think against Angie was the best match I played the whole week.

WTA Insider: You told reporters after your match that you believe in yourself now. Why? Why didn’t you believe in yourself before?
Cibulkova: Because I was never that kind of player that came on tour and was winning tournaments. I always needed, you know, proof. I needed to beat a Top 20 player, a Top 10 player – I was taking small steps to get where I am now. And I always thought that winning a Grand Slam was something unreal, it’s impossible. But by winning this, I want to achieve another dream, and that’s winning a Grand Slam.

WTA Insider: Did it mean more to win yesterday than to reach the Australian Open final a couple of years ago?
Cibulkova: Oh yes. To play finals is an amazing feeling. But to win the whole thing, you cannot compare these two things.

WTA Insider: You’ve had good results everywhere. Which major do you think you have the best chance of making a charge?
Cibulkova: We’ll see. I dunno, we’ll see. As you said, I can play on all the surfaces. [I’m most comfortable at] Roland Garros, or maybe Australian Open, too. But hard court and clay court for me is the top. The grass it’s like for one tournament I made the quarterfinals, and that’s amazing. This year is the breaking year in my career, if you know what I mean. Before every tournament you feel your form, how you feel the court and everything has to come together to win such a big event.

WTA Insider: Typically, a player of your size would rely on speed and defense to win matches. Obviously you’re an offensive-minded player. Has anyone ever tried to convince you to play with more feel, rather than your power game?
Cibulkova: No, it was actually it was the other way around. When I was little, or younger, it was always I was just a defensive player; I was just running to the fence and putting the balls back. I think I had a lot of coaches in my career and every single coach taught me something different that now I use now. I remember it was maybe five or six years ago, I had a coach who pushed me to play really aggressive. And since then I’ve known this is the way I’m going to play. This coach I’m with right now, we’ve been together more than three years and I’d say he’s the best coach I ever had in my career.

WTA Insider: How hard was it to buy into this aggressive strategy?
Cibulkova: It was a really hard, but it was a long process. You know, it was maybe 10 years or longer, and inside of me I’m was never a killer on the court, I was never the one that was winning. Now I’m the one that’s going to kill you on the court. This is something I had to learn and this is something that put me in the Top 5. I learned this killer instinct and I just went for it, because in the important moments before I was always afraid to go for my shots, or I wanted the opponent to make a mistake. And this is not how champions play.

WTA Insider: Do you believe that the big titles nowadays go to the big-hitters?
Cibulkova: Yes, of course I believe that. I mean Aga Radwanska she’s a defensive player and she also won WTA Finals, but I see it this way: if a big-hitting girl is playing her best tennis, no one can do anything. You see me playing great yesterday and I didn’t let Angie into the match.

WTA Insider: What prompted you to hire a mental coach?
Cibulkova: My coach. He convince me. He said, ‘You know, Dominika, it’s not only about how many hours you spend on the court but for you the most important thing is how many hours you spend thinking about tennis off the court,’ Because I always thought that I was working more than 100% on the court, and then it’s over for me. But he told me that I needed my head to be there and to be strong. It wasn’t easy convincing me, because sometimes I can be stubborn, but after a while I really started to believe in it and now it’s a part of me and I can’t imagine to play tennis without this thing.

WTA Insider: Do you talk to you mental coach just about what’s going through your mind during those tight moments?
Cibulkova: Yes, exactly, and for me the most important thing is to hold my emotions together, because I’m really emotional on the court. So when I get angry or miss something, I cannot live in the past. This is the biggest change. I handle these situations now. Even this week, you could see against Halep, I survived so many tight moments. I think in the past I couldn’t handle a match like this, even yesterday after the two match points I missed…

WTA Insider: You smiled after you missed those first three match points…
Cibulkova: This is something we also tried to work on. I was so frustrated; this was like my worst moment on the court, I couldn’t describe how bad I felt on the court in that moment when I missed the forehand. This isn’t happening! I didn’t miss a forehand like that in the whole match. But I knew I had to hold it together, I had to forget, leave it in the past and think about what I had to do next.

WTA Insider: I assume the thing you want to do next is to relax. You’re going on vacation next. So you’re going to just chill out?
Cibulkova: You can ask my husband. I’m the laziest person in the world. Really, I just can do nothing. I have my book and I’m just lying there in the shade saying, ‘This is good, this is good!’ I think because I spend so much time working that when I’m off, it’s nothing.

SINGAPORE – Most of the time, players tend to offer identical analysis of a tournament’s court speed. Clay is slower than hardcourts, which are, in turn, slower than grass and indoor courts. But within that hierarchy lies a maddening gradient of quick clay courts and slow hardcourts that can make it difficult to assess which court will favor a player on any given week.

Speaking at Saturday’s All-Access hour, Agnieszka Radwanska, Simona Halep, Karolina Pliskova, Garbiñe Muguruza, Madison Keys, and Dominika Cibulkova were all asked to give their take on the BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore presented by SC Global’s Centre Court. The consensus was admittedly hard to gauge.

“I don’t remember last year, but I think it’s so slow,” Muguruza said. “It’s so slow. I think there’s going to be hard matches in that surface.

“But I love the court. It’s such a great show and environment, so we’ll put the effort there.”

Coming from the Generali Ladies Linz, Keys agreed that the court was slower than a player might find at the average indoor, but even that criticism is relative.

“They’re playing a little bit slower than what Linz was playing, but it was actually really nice to be able to go and play an indoor tournament and then come here. It feels pretty similar. The ball stays really low. Definitely a faster court, so I’m not complaining about that.”

Winning Linz to qualify for Singapore, Cibulkova thought it had less to do with speed and more to do with bounce, which will be crucial for the big-hitting Slovak to get her rhythm on Sunday’s first round robin match against Halep.

“I thought the surface would be pretty similar [to Linz], but it’s not. It’s very different. It bounces and it’s a little bit faster.

“So I still have to get used to it. It’s good that it’s at least indoor, that I don’t have to get used to indoor and outdoor.”

Runner-up in 2014, Halep pointed to the slowness of the court as one of the reasons why she liked playing at the WTA Finals, but Pliskova wasn’t sure the court played as slow as her colleagues insisted.

“I definitely wouldn’t say it’s fast, but it could be slower. I’ve played on slower surfaces so I was expecting it’s going to be even slower what I heard from last year from the girls.

“I would say it’s somewhere in the middle. For the serve I think it’s pretty fast, but when you play the rally it’s not that fast.

“Hopefully for the crowd they are going to see some rallies and good shots from the players.”

One would expect Radwanska, the defending champion, to have the definitive answer when it came to court speed. The Pole ultimately seemed as mystified as her peers, but if there’s one thing the shotmaker knows how to do on any surface, it’s improvise:

Q. You were here a couple days ago. One of earliest players here. Have you had a hit on court? Have the conditions changed from last year?
AGNIESZKA RADWANSKA: I think, of course, the surface is very similar [to last year]. It’s the same. I think it’s a bit faster because it’s already been used [this week]. But I don’t think it’s that slow as last year. That’s what I notice.

But, well, it’s always a little bit tough for us to play indoors. I think I just play one indoor tournament in Stuttgart and then here. It’s good to be here a couple days earlier to adjust to the conditions.

All photos courtesy of Getty Images.

ZHUHAI, China – The fairytale continues for Zhang Shuai in Zhuhai.

The wildcard won a second straight match at the Huajin Securities WTA Elite Trophy Zhuhai, guaranteeing her a place in the semifinals and a first career finish inside the Top 25.

“It’s amazing because I never thought I could play this tournament, and now I’m in the semifinals,” she told WTA Insider on Thursday. “I prepared a lot for this week, so I’m really happy.”

Her storybook season began in Australia by way of Tokyo. Zhang was ranked just inside the Top 200 when she won an inaugural ITF 100K Challenger there last fall – foreshadowing what was to come Down Under. The Chinese No.1 plans to return to the Tokyo tournament next week, where she will be top seed.

“I have a lot of good memories there and want to go back. I also have a lot of friends in Japan and Tokyo; they’re waiting for me already, so it’s very exciting!

“The tournament has good food, good hotel, and good courts. I always look forward to going to Tokyo.”

Zhang’s season won’t end there. Her final stop of 2016 brings her to Hawaii, fulfilling a lifelong dream.

“I’ve never had the chance to go. I’m already ranked in the Top 50, so I couldn’t enter a WTA 125K event, so I have to thank the tournament for giving me a wildcard.”

She found out about the wildcard into Zhuhai three weeks ago in Beijing; she had just defeated Simona Halep for the second time in nine months, the first coming in that fateful first round in Melbourne.

“She’s a really great player. My coach always says I have to learn from her, because she plays really beautiful tennis. I like her as a person too; she’s a very nice girl.

“It was amazing, even after the Australian Open, I didn’t think I could beat her again. But I’ve since been able to not only beat her, but also other Top 20 players like Timea Bacsinszky and Samantha Stosur.

“Now I believe I can do anything.”

That limitless mentality has helped her achieve a career-best season after a year in the tennis wilderness. It was just two years ago that Zhang was ranked in the Top 30 and seeded at Grand Slams, but until beating Halep, she had never won a major main draw match in 14 previous attempts.

“Now I’m more focused on the court, focused on myself. I don’t think…anything, really! I’m not thinking about ranking or points; I just try my best, trying to play my tennis and my style. I don’t really care about whom I’m playing, or how they play. I just go!”

Zhang plans to roll into the off-season with similar gusto, hoping to maintain the momentum gained from her Asian Swing surge and bring it back to Australia for an encore performance.

“I don’t think I’ll change much about my pre-season. I’ll just try to train hard, give 100% of my heart and focus on tennis. We’re always trying to make improvements, so we’ll try to do that, too.

“But this year, I played really well, so I think I’m doing things the right way. I just want to keep going.”

Forward motion is a recurring motif from Zhang, which certainly makes sense; if you were living her dream, would you want to wake up?

“This whole year has been filled with so many amazing memories. I can’t pick just one, but of course, I can’t forget the Australian Open. I’ll remember that week forever. I also made the quarterfinal at the China Open, now the semifinals here in Zhuhai.

“This year has been a dream come true.”

All photos courtesy of WTA Elite Trophy.

ZHUHAI, China – After visiting one of the city’s most impressive landmarks, tennis legend and WTA Elite Trophy ambassador Steffi Graf continued her whirlwind tour of Zhuhai at the Huafa Tennis Center for a charity clinic.

Click here for a photo gallery of all of Steffi’s activities in Zhuhai!

Graf was joined by over thirty talented youngsters from primary and junior high schools in the area, including 19 from Macao as well as from Huajin Securities, tournament ball kids, selected staff and one lucky iQYI SuperFan.

Yang Yanling, who was selected from the iQIYI iSuperFan campaign, got an extra treat; he enjoyed a special one-on-one conversation up close with the former World No.1. Yang was thrilled by Graf’s encouragement to continue playing tennis, and more importantly, to enjoy what tennis will bring to his life and future.

Check out all the best photos from the event right here, courtesy of the WTA Elite Trophy!