Kristina Mladenovic and Caroline Garcia, who won Roland Garros 2016 in doubles before breaking up, are entered together for the Australian Open doubles tournament.
Five years we’ve been waiting for that! Since their semi-final at the 2017 Australian Open, Caroline Garcia and Kristina Mladenovic had not played doubles together in a Grand Slam tournament. This will however be the case again next month in Melbourne. The two French players are in fact registered in the women’s doubles tournament of the first Grand Slam tournament of the year. From 2018 to 2020, Kristina Mladenovic had played all the Majors alongside Timea Babos. And with what success! The Franco-Hungarian pair had indeed won the Australian Open 2018 and 2020 and Roland Garros 2019 and 2020, and lost in the final of the US Open 2018. In 2021, the Frenchwoman had chosen to no longer play the doubles to focus on the singles (without much success since she only won three Grand Slam matches). And to start 2022, the pair are separated again, because Timea Babos did not want to be vaccinated, and therefore cannot play tournaments in Australia.
Four tournaments won for the pair Garcia – Mladenovic
While waiting for a possible reformation of the duo for Roland Garros, Kristina Mladenovic and Caroline Garcia have therefore decided to re-team in Melbourne. And the Franco-French duo hope to relive their great moments of 2016-17 when out of five contested Majors, they won Roland-Garros (in 2016) and played the final of the US Open (in 2016) and the Open d ‘Australia (in 2017). The two native of 1993 had also won tournaments in Charleston, Stuttgart and Madrid. But after the final in Melbourne in 2017, Caroline Garcia decided to stop her doubles adventure with “Kiki”, while also deciding to give up the Fed Cup, to focus on singles. (with success since in the fall, she had achieved the incredible Beijing-Wuhan double and had qualified for the Masters). Since then, the Lyonnaise returned to the Fed Cup and played three times in doubles with her former partner: in the Fed Cup against Romania in the semi-final and against Australia in the final in 2019 (victories) and at the Tokyo Olympic Games ( defeat in the first round). Will this reformation be successful? To see in the coming weeks … The two players have in any case decided to prepare differently. Caroline Garcia has already arrived in Australia, where she will play in the Melbourne preparatory tournament next week, while Kristina Mladenovic, who played in the WTA 125 final in Seoul last week, has returned home to Dubai and is not registered. at any tournament before the Australian Open.
