Serena's Friday Fiesta
World No.1 Serena Williams got to celebrate reaching the third round of Wimbledon with a little help from a fan, who traded a taco t-shirt for the top seed’s cracked racquet.
World No.1 Serena Williams got to celebrate reaching the third round of Wimbledon with a little help from a fan, who traded a taco t-shirt for the top seed’s cracked racquet.
An interview with Dominika Cibulkova after her semifinal win at the BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore presented by SC Global.
WTA Insider | In the second WTA Insider Live Blog of Semifinal Saturday, World No.1 Angelique Kerber defeated defending WTA Finals champion Agnieszka Radwanska.
New WTA Finals champion Dominika Cibulkova is about to step up into the Top 5 rankings – and for the first time in her career, she genuinely feels she belongs there.
Watch interviews and highlights from Singapore on the WTA Facebook page!
One week on from a painful opening night defeat to Kerber, Cibulkova gained revenge in spectacular fashion, powering to a 6-3, 6-4 victory in an hour and 16 minutes.
“I have no words, coming here for the first time, the biggest tournament of my life. I still don’t know how I won, I put the ball over the net and it went in; it’s the happiest moment of my life,” Cibulkova said in her on-court interview.
Cibulkova dominated from the outset, bossing the baseline exchanges to romp through the first set. There was no let-up in the second, as the Slovak continued to attack anything remotely short with gusto.
At 3-3, the pressure paid off, the German firing wide to slip a break behind. For all the spectacular winners from the back of the court, arguably the most impressive aspect of the World No.8’s performance was her serve; a remarkable 83% first-serve percentage neutralized Kerber’s famed return game.
The only wobble came as she closed in on the biggest title of her career. Three match points came and went before Lady Luck intervened, the ball clipping the tape and dropping dead onto Kerber’s side.
“It wasn’t easy to go on the court after two losses but I was mentally very strong and I knew I played well in the first two matches, I was just a little bit unlucky. Then at the end I was lucky!”
The masterclass – which featured 28 winners and only 14 unforced errors – was a fitting end to a dramatic debut at the WTA Finals.
After falling in three sets to Kerber in her opening round-robin match, she was roundly beaten by Madison Keys to leave her hopes hanging by a thread. However, victory over Simona Halep in her third outing saw her sneak into the semifinals, where she then staged a brilliant comeback against Svetlana Kuznetsova.
Cibulkova is the second player in a row after Agnieszka Radwanska to win the WTA Finals after only one victory in the three round-robin games. She is also the first debutante to lift the title at the season-ending showpiece since Petra Kvitova in 2011, and the achievement will see her climb to a career-high No.5 when the new rankings are released on Monday.
Top seed Serena Williams moved one step closer to defending her title after battling past Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova to reach her tenth Wimbledon semifinal.
The Huajin Securities WTA Elite Trophy Zhuhai gets underway on Tuesday, Elina Svitolina and Timea Bacsinzsky among those hoping to make a winning start to their final event of 2016.
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.
ZHUHAI, China – No.12 seed and wildcard Zhang Shuai rang in the start of the Huajin Securities WTA Elite Trophy Zhuhai in impressive style, defeating No.6 seed Timea Bacsinszky, 6-1, 6-1, to take the early lead in the Camellia Group.
“I am very happy to win, actually just to play in my home country and win the first game here,” she said after the match through translation. “I cannot say how happy I am about this.
“It’s been three weeks since the China Open, and during that time it was a bit tough for me. Without game I kind of don’t know what to do with my life! Even though continuous game and competition makes me tired. I like playing even more.”
Zhang is in the midst of a career-best season, one that has seen her rise from outside the Top 100 to a high of No.27 after reaching the quarterfinals of the Australian Open and China Open just three weeks ago. Playing Bacsinszky, a former Top 10 player whom she narrowly beat at the Olympic tennis event, Zhang blistered past her Swiss opposition in 57 minutes, dropping just three points behind her first serve.
.@zhangshuai121 delivering her post-win press conference @WTAEliteTrophy pic.twitter.com/CYedNrwyrE
— WTA Insider (@WTA_insider) November 1, 2016
“It’s been three months since the Olympics by now, and I did see my progress in the performance. I have to say this is not a coincidence. I am pretty confident in myself now.
“I just watched some of the video parts of me playing Bacsinszky during the Olympics and I can see that after that and after all the games in Beijing and Japan and Wuhan and Korea I really improved a lot. I believe that if I can make the best out of my training I can play even better game. I also do enjoy my home court advantage here. It was great game for me.”
Hoping to reach the semifinals in her Zhuhai debut, Zhang will have to get past first alternate Timea Babos, who entered the Camellia Group after No.2 seed Carla Suárez Navarro withdrew due to a right wrist injury.
“I am physically doing very well. After Beijing I took three weeks off and I well adjusted myself. I’m fully recovered now.
“I can say that I’m at my best at this moment. “That is one of the reasons why I played well.”
In the second match of the day, Elina Svitolina overcame a slow start to defeat Kiki Bertena, 2-6, 6-4, 6-2.
“I think she started playing really well and I was bit in and out with my attitude and with my game,” Svitolina said after the match.
“But then I was just waiting for my chances, and I think in the second set I took my chances. In the end I think just playing solid was the key for me today.”
.@CarlaSuarezNava has withdrawn from @WTAEliteTrophy due to the right wrist injury sustained in Moscow. Babos next in. Statement from CSN: pic.twitter.com/btQA3S4tgI
— WTA Insider (@WTA_insider) November 1, 2016
Petra Kvitova continued her terrific end of season form with a dominant victory over Roberta Vinci in her opening round-robin match at the Huajin Securities WTA Elite Trophy Zhuhai.