Kristina Mladenovic seems keen to spill positive thoughts about opponents
World No. 53 Kristina Mladenovic debuted her Roland Garros campaign by ousting fellow French Fiona Ferro with a 6-3 7-6(3) score.
“It's always difficult to start the tournament,” confided the 2017 French Open quarterfinalist, describing her game as “quite slow” at first. “You never play your best match at the very beginning. I'm very satisfied that I won today. I had good moments. There are other points I would like to improve, and there is a lot of game strategy that I have to implement for the next rounds. I have to work on that right from my next practices.”
While Mladenovic had seemed on the verge of concluding the match easily in the second set, her adversary sparked some indecision by bringing the game to a tie-break. The Rome quarterfinalist talked highly of Ferro, the adversary she’d come to meet in the qualifyings of the Italian Open,
“Fiona had a very good play. At no point in time she gave up, and she played her chance all the way till the end. [...] The main task was to win the match today. It was really difficult. Fiona is young, full of talent. She had nothing to lose, and I had all the pressure on my shoulders today.
She has even raised her level of play in the second set, that's enabled her to come back and even serve for the set. But I'm satisfied that I was able to be solid and to finish the second set very well.”
The French will soon face Petra Martic for a place in the draw of 32, and she prepares herself for a tough game, “It's a very difficult draw for the second round. Maybe she's [Petra Martic] not well known from the general public, but she's a very dangerous player on the clay. She has a very high win over losses.
And we played a WTA event and we played three hours. She won 7-6 and won the tournament. And then she did a very good tournament in Madrid, and she was, during the second week in Roland for many years, every year maybe. She's a very tough opponent.
I think that she's the favourite for our match because she's very strong on clay. But it's true that we had a benchmark match in Istanbul not so long ago. So I will see that match again to be better prepared to go further.”
from Tennis World USA http://bit.ly/2Mawjxs
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