Tennis News

AUCKLAND, New Zealand – Former World No.1s Ana Ivanovic and Caroline Wozniacki, two of the biggest draws at this year’s ASB Classic, went to Newmarket on the weekend to play street tennis, sign autographs and meet the press. Here are 10 of the best photos, courtesy of www.photosport.nz.

MELBOURNE, Australia – Taking stock of the first two rounds of play at the Australian Open, where Serena Williams leads a class of players who look primed for a title run.

Fit and ready to fight.

Through the first two rounds of play, here are the players who look in-form and ready to make a real run at the Australian Open title.

Serena Williams

No one had a tougher draw in the first two rounds than Serena and she passed with flying colors, beating Belinda Bencic and Lucie Safarova in straight sets. Her win over Safarova on Thursday night was particularly impressive. Serena fired 15 aces and a total of 35 winners to 23 unforced errors and she was clutch when she needed to be. Serena faced down six break points and saved them all to win, 6-3, 6-4.

And you know it was good if she says it was good. Serena’s her harshest critic, which explains why she didn’t have much patience for anyone finding fault in her performance.

“Scrappy?”

Serena put in a top-notch performance tonight. So you can understand this response. #AusOpen pic.twitter.com/PJrvI4AAVH

— WTA Insider (@WTA_insider) January 19, 2017

Karolina Pliskova

Through two matches against, as she said, soft opponents, the World No.5 has lost just four games, dropping two bagel sets along the way. She has yet to be tested in the tournament, but she’s been striking the ball well and has been broken just once.

Johanna Konta

Konta continues her incredible form that was on display in her run to the Apia International Sydney title last week. She has not lost a set, beating Kirsten Flipkens and Naomi Osaka handily, and her level has been outstanding. If she wasn’t in Serena’s quarter of the draw she’d be a more than justifiable pick to make the semifinals, if not the final. That’s just how good Jo is playing right now.

Dominika Cibulkova

The No.6 seed has not lost a set but she’s been made to fight on court to beat Denisa Allertova and Hsieh Su-Wei. There have been some wobbles, but the BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore presented by SC Global champion has yet to panic, a true sign of her growing confidence. Cibulkova did not come into the tournament with many matches, and she may need a few more to fully round into form. But she’s been solid early.

Garbiñe Muguruza

The Spaniard insists that her abductor injury is getting better as time goes on, and her ability to pocket tough straight-set wins in the early going will only help. She did not have dominant wins over Marina Erakovic and Sam Crawford, but she’s shown the same resilience she showed at the Brisbane International to start the year. Muguruza is battle-tested and she’s playing well. The only question is whether her body holds up during the tournament.

Svetlana Kuznetsova

Much like Pliskova, the No.8 seed has yet to face a real test, losing just one game to Mariana Duque-Mariño and handling Aussie teenager Jamiee Fourlis easily.

Venus Williams

As I wrote before the tournament, Venus has a great draw to make the second week and possibly the semifinals. Through two matches she has looked far better than expected given the right arm injury she’s been managing. Much like Muguruza, we’ll be keeping an eye on how she’s doing physically – she withdrew from doubles so as to not aggravate the injury – but so far, so good for Venus.

The Dark Horse

Eugenie Bouchard looks primed to play spoiler in her section of the draw. Bouchard has been playing confident tennis in Melbourne and faced CoCo Vandeweghe on Friday. Get through that match and she could earn a shot at defending champion Angelique Kerber, who is still trying to find her form.

The Surprises

Jennifer Brady, Maria Sakkari, Nicole Gibbs, Mona Barthel, Ashleigh Barty, Mirjana Lucic-Baroni and Sorana Cirstea probably aren’t names many penciled into the third round.

Quote of the Day: “Sometimes people think you play a top player and you’ll go in there relaxed like you have nothing to lose. I don’t see it that way at all.”

Mirjana Lucic-Baroni pulled off the upset of the day, routing No.3 Agnieszka Radwanska 6-3, 6-2 in just 66 minutes. The 34-year-old fired 33 winners to just 20 unforced errors, and she left Radwanska playing the role of bystander. “Shooting – not playing – is the right word for that game,” Radwanska said. “In or out. That’s it. It went so quickly.”

“Sometimes people think you play a top player and you’ll go in there relaxed like you have nothing to lose,” Lucic-Baroni said. “I don’t see it that way at all. I know I have the game to beat top players so I came in there with a gameplan today to win the match. I didn’t go to see the court and enjoy. I’m way too old and I’ve been around way too long to just gain experience. I came there to win the match.”

It took the Croat 19 years to win her second match ever at the Australian Open, which came in the first round. Now, 48 hours later she scored her third.

“Feelings like tonight are incredible on court,” Lucic-Baroni said. “You can’t replicate it anywhere else in life.”

Jennifer Brady saves five match points to beat Heather Watson.

The American qualifier, ranked No.116, is playing just her second main draw at a Slam. Thanks to some clutch serving, she saved five match points to beat Watson, 2-6, 7-6(3), 10-8 in 2 hours and 43 minutes. She’ll face No.14 seed Elena Vesnina next. The Russian has a chance to make the second week without facing a player in the Top 100.

Brady told reporters she had no expectation of still being in the tournament in the third round. “I booked my hotel through the 20th,” Brady said. “Gotta change that now.”

Brady’s friends are pretty excited for her:

Spot the brat in the 3rd rd of @AustralianOpen!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/N07XJ7uqxG

— Grace Min (@GraceMin56) January 19, 2017

SakkAttack!

Greece’s Maria Sakkari won her first main draw match at a Slam here in Melbourne last year. Twelve months later she’s into her first third round, beating No.28 seed Alizé Cornet, 7-5, 4-6, 6-1. With the massive Greek support here in Melbourne, Sakkari was left speechless when asked what this result means to her.

“I still cannot believe it. It’s a dream. I grew up watching all these players that I’m playing now and I could not imagine when I was young that I would be here in the third round playing against these players.”

“It’s something that not many people can do, around the world. I still cannot believe it so I cannot tell you what it feels like.”

Johanna Konta and Caroline Wozniacki set for a big third-round clash.

Both women won through easily on Thursday, setting up a must-watch match on Saturday. Clear your schedules. That’s the biggest third-round showdown of the tournament. It will be the first meeting between the two.

Dominika Cibulkova on the mental game.

Cibulkova started working with a sports psychologist in February of 2015 and she credits all the hard work they’ve done over the last two years for her on-court improvements. But she admits that she wasn’t sure about it when they first began working together.

“In the beginning I didn’t believe this was something that would help me achieve what I want,” she said. “But I started to work with him and I saw the results. So I started to believe once I tried it myself.”

Earlier in the week, CoCo Vandeweghe said she had tried working with a sports psychologist years ago but stopped because she found it too invasive. I asked Cibulkova why more players don’t work with a sports psychologist, especially in a high-pressure game like tennis.

“I think the best players, they work with a mental coach, they just don’t talk about it,” she said. “They just want to keep it for themselves. Who would want to say, ‘I’m doing this extra and it will help you too’?

“Three years ago I thought if I give 100% on the court then off the court it’s my time off and I don’t have to think about tennis and do other things. Now my coach led me to this mental coach and he said, ‘Domi, you need this because your game is so good but you need your head to be more stable and more strong.'”

Nicole Gibbs gets back to basics.

Gibbs is into the third round of a Slam for the first time since the US Open in 2014, and for just the second time in her career. She came through an All-American derby, beating Irina Falconi in straight sets.

Watching Gibbs early this season it’s clear that she’s been working on being more aggressive and looking to hit forehands with more pace and placement. Gibbs credits a racquet switch during the off-season, trading in her Wilson Burn for the new Wilson Blade. But she’s also getting back to the fundamentals of her game, which she felt she went away from last year.

“When my dad built my game he kind of modeled me after Justine Henin,” Gibbs said. “He wanted me running around backhands, looking for my forehand everywhere. His only regret was not giving me a one-handed backhand.

“That was the basis of my game and for the first time in a long time I have a coach that sees it that way as well. So we’re getting back to the foundational principles that my game was built around and I think that’s going to take me to the highest potential peak of my game.”

Naomi Osaka bows out.

For the first time in five Slams, Osaka failed to reach the third round, though in this case you can blame a tough draw against Konta. Asked about her goals for the season, the 19-year-old was pretty clear.

“Goals for the season, I wanted to get into the Top 20, win a tournament, and then get to the quarterfinals of a Slam.”

Serena is just…Serena.

“Overall I played really well. But unfortunately, Serena played…Serena.”

That was Lucie Safarova after playing a great match and still finding herself on the losing end of a straight-set loss to Serena.

“She’s not someone you see in a second-round match. I know that [French Open final against Safarova] was a tough three-set match. She never gives up. Like she’s just always fighting to come back. So I knew that I wanted to jump out in the lead.

“I knew that I wanted to just be Serena. That’s what I’m good at doing, is being Serena.”

So what exactly does it mean to “be Serena”?

“To me, it’s being a champion, but not only by the way I play, but the things I do off the court as well,” Serena said. “I know that being Serena on the court is in a way being calm, which is in my name, but always having that fire as well. I think, most of all, being confident. I should be confident ’cause there’s no other Serena. I mean, I’m Serena. Maybe there is another one, but she’s not in tennis.

“So I think sometimes I forget. I try to be so humble that I forget I have accomplished so much. I really wanted today to just have confidence when I was out there.”

Day 5 Matches to Watch:

Eugenie Bouchard vs. CoCo Vandeweghe (1st match, Rod Laver Arena)
Angelique Kerber vs. Kristyna Pliskova (2nd match, Rod Laver Arena)
Elina Svitolina vs. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (1st match, Margaret Court Arena)
Venus Williams vs. Duan Ying-Ying (3rd match, Margaret Court Arena)
Garbiñe Muguruza vs. Anastasija Sevastova (2nd night match, Margaret Court Arena)
Jelena Jankovic vs. Svetlana Kuznetsova (1st match, Hisense Arena)

All photos courtesy of Getty Images.

Andrea Petkovic made her major breakthrough five years ago at the Australian Open – defeating Maria Sharapova en route to a debut Grand Slam quarterfinal in 2011 – but how close was the German to skipping the tournaments Down Under altogether?

Despite reaching the semifinals of the Miami Open and spending much of the spring ranked in the Top 10, Petkovic’s 2015 ended with a thud and a 6-0, 6-0 loss at the Huajin Securities WTA Elite Trophy Zhuhai. Worn out and wounded, she spent the start of her off-season wondering whether her career was something she truly wanted to continue.

“It was very tough. The first week I was basically just at home. I didn’t go out at all.”

Her malaise nearly caused her to cancel a much-anticipated vacation to New York. Though she ultimately took the trip, a week in the Big Apple led to one last soul-searching moment.

“[My friend] had to check something with her luggage because it got lost on the way in, and there was one point where I took my wallet and I looked inside of it. I had a hundred bucks left, and I was like, ‘I could just stay here. I could make it in New York. I could leave my life behind and take a cab back. It would be enough to get back to the city, to just stay here and see where life takes me.’

“It was like in a movie,” she later told WTA Insider, “because then my friend came back and asked, ‘are you ready to go?’ and I said, ‘yeah, yeah, sure, let’s go.’

“I thought about it again while I was in the airplane, and I was like, ‘OK, you’ve made a decision to go back to your real life, or your actual life that you are leading in Germany. You have to figure out if you want to do that 100%, otherwise you’re not coming back [to tennis].'”

That desire to escape was the apex of Petkovic’s quarter-life crisis, one that had caused her to question the path she had taken at the expense of other opportunities that no longer felt possible.

“In my early 20s, I felt like, ‘I can be an actress, a singer, a lawyer, a doctor, a chef, or a professional tennis player,’ that all of the doors were open. Then, all of a sudden I realized some of those doors were closing; I’m never going to lead a normal student life, living in a dorm and partying all night. That’s not going to happen for me, and I think I was at a part of my life when I thought, ‘but maybe I wanted that; why didn’t I do that?’

“I found myself in an identity crisis, and I think when you’re 27, 28, everyone asks themselves the same questions when are that age or older. That was the first time you really grow into an adult – for me, at least.”

Ironically, the very thing that might have made going on feel all the more overwhelming was that which catalyzed Petkovic’s own resolution to continue.

“The Olympics saved me – rather, it saved my tennis career – because I didn’t want to go out not having played the Olympics. Especially being in Rio and Brazil, I think that’s a city and a country that really is fitting to me and my personality; I’ve never been there, so I wanted to experience that.”

With a goal in her pocket and a new coach in Jan de Witt at the helm, the 2014 French Open semifinalist was able to calm the storms in her mind and focus on little else beyond her own love of the game.

“I may not always be in love with the world around it, but I love the raw essence of the sport, and that’s why I picked it up in the first place. It was me who made the choice; nobody pushed me into becoming a professional tennis player. So, I made my peace with that, for at least another couple of years!”

At once effervescent and analytical, Petkovic admits to having her share of neuroses, but is taking a calm approach to what promises to be a crazy season with four major tournaments and an Olympic Games.

“This is the first time I’m giving away responsibility because I’m someone who really wants to have control, and I’d never really found the coach that I could trust 100%, where I could just let it go and say, ‘I trust you, you do my schedule, and that’s in your hands. I’m going to have a say every now and then but you know better on what I should be doing because I’m too emotional in some aspects to be objective and to actually have a contribution to the plans that makes sense.'”

Tracing back the trail of self-doubt that followed her through 2015, she now believes she never mentally recovered from her very first match in Brisbane, a loss to former champion Kaia Kanepi. There were few such problems a year later in a 6-1, 6-2 win over Brazil’s own Teliana Pereira; the German feels ready and, thanks to her new coach, more than just physically fit.

“Jan is a very intelligent person; he’s very straightforward, very honest and very structured, and that has helped me tremendously because I immediately felt like I could give more control to him. He was very careful with my health, measuring my lactic acid every second day, sending me to doctors, yoga, osteopathy, flexibility and mobility.

“So when I say ‘fitter,’ I mean healthier and that has helped me with my mind. That was a big part of everything I was feeling last year; I was never 100% healthy; I was never really injured but there were always little things that were bothering me. Now that I feel healthy and pain-free, I’m just much more myself and more centered. There is something to this whole mind-body relationship!”

She may not have pursued that new life in New York, but her decidedly Empire State of Mind could be exactly what the veteran needs to make another splash in 2016.

Listen to Petkovic’s thoughts on the new season and more during the latest episode of the WTA Insider Podcast: