How Barbora Strycova wired her mind to accomplish Wimbledon dream
Barbora Strycova told WTA Insider how she feels after her unbelievable Wimbledon run that brought her the first Grand Slam title, helped her climb to number one in the WTA Doubles ranking and offered the chance to compete for a spot in the singles final.
The 33 years old player made the tournament of her life at the All England Club. In the singles draw, she fought through Tsurenko, Siegemund, Bertens, Mertens, Konta to finally bow down to Serena Williams in the semifinals of the Grand Slam. This is the best singles run of her career in a major tournament. And this was not enough for the Czech player which achieved her first doubles Grand Slam title alongside Hsieh and became the first couple to equalize Williams sisters’ record of winning Wimbledon without losing a single set. After triumphing in London, Strycova became, for the first time in her life, the number one in the WTA Doubles ranking.
“It means everything I dreamed off. It means something that I really couldn't imagine, but in the back of my head I was dreaming about, and when I was getting older I felt like it can happen. And it just happened! I am extremely proud of myself and proud of the team I have behind my back. And it's something really special”, said Strycova quoted by WTA Insider.
Barbora considered herself a singles player rather than a doubles one, but she admitted that, at the start of 2019, she set the goal of being the best doubles WTA player in the world: “It was a bigger goal of mine at the beginning of the year. As you said I always considered myself as a singles player, but this year I was like, OK, I want to become No.1 because I can do that.
I have a great partner next to me because without her I would not achieve it because she is something, really. She helped me to be a better person on the court. And we really suit each other. And it's something I also dreamed of and dreams come true.”
Moreover, the Czech talked about how she managed to change her negative thoughts into positive ones by adopting healthy mental habits: “You train forehand cross, you train serve, and you have to train also your head. And you have to train it every single day and every hour. For example, in the morning I wake up, I train my head for like 20 minutes. And then during the day you always have to check your body with yourself. So you have to check with yourself how you feel.
Tennis players can be very negative people, like, I am very negative. I put myself down a lot. So what I changed was that I didn't do that. I was talking to myself in a good way. I was talking like, no this is good, mistakes happen, and we are not perfect and I just kept saying it to myself and I believed it. And then things got easier.
I didn't change myself at all, but it's a great question because this is the biggest win for me. I found myself. I am really happy with myself, how I work, how I perform on the court mentally, and my attitude.
In these two weeks, I showed myself that I can do it and I can also overcome myself because sometimes I couldn't before and I was losing big matches and this time I won big matches. And this is the biggest win for me. ”
from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/2ymB4dy
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