Karolína Muchová is falling sharply in the world rankings. After Wimbledon, where she lost in the first round after a clear loss to Romania’s Simona Halepová, she will no longer be a top 100 player.
London (from our newsletter) – In January at the Australian Open, the Czech tennis player could not defend the semifinals due to injury, in London she did not have a chance to imitate last year’s quarterfinals. Even if it shines the most, points are not awarded at the All England Club this year anyway.
Twenty-five-year-old Karolína Muchová arrived among the journalists on Tuesday sad but determined to continue to fight despite the adversity of fate.
What did you say to the lottery that assigned you a former champion and one of the favorites to the first round?
It was definitely a heavy draw, but I’m not deployed, so I can’t expect it to be easy in my position.
Halep played well, at a great tempo. How do you feel about the match?
She played as she needed to. I wasn’t much on the court today, so I’m trying to forget about the match.
What exactly did you not do?
It’s soon after the match, now it occurs to me that I didn’t do almost anything. I made a lot of light mistakes, it was such an unfocused performance. There were several factors, including movement. In the last few days, I trained super on the grass, but I didn’t turn it into a match today.
Are you at least in improved health? From the ankle injury you suffered at Roland Garros, you recovered relatively quickly…
Oh yes. I’m healthy, nothing hurts. It is nice. I had my leg in such an orthosis for ten days. I did rehabilitation, cryotherapy every day, which helped me a lot. The ankle healed quickly. No one on the team expected it to go so fast. I could come back pretty quickly.
So what were your ambitions for going to Wimbledon?
I felt good, I felt good in training. I thought I could play well here, but it didn’t work out. It wasn’t my day.
Can you throw things fast behind your head?
Again, it’s good to take something from it. After all, defeats push a person more than a simple win. It is good to forget certain things, but also to learn from them. I definitely don’t want to lose like this in other tournaments. I will probably mess with it for a few days and hopefully I will get motivated from it. I will probably not have such a dropout on the concrete on the concrete.
Wimbledon is played without points this year. Kateřina Siniaková said that she was badly motivated when one knows that she can only lose, even if she shows the best performances. How did you feel?
I didn’t think about it during the game. I wouldn’t say it took away from my performance today. That I lost here in the first round is probably the only positive I can find about it for this reason. I would leave with zero anyway, even if I won the whole tournament. Before the tournament, I was sorry that there were no points here and that everyone felt it internally, but that it would take away my motivation, no.
What is your opinion on the specifics of this year’s Wimbledon? The organizers first eliminated Russian and Belarusian tennis players from the tournament, the ATP and WTA then reacted by not awarding points…
Not having points in the biggest, most prestigious tournament is an incomprehensible decision that will not help anyone. If something came out of it that would help Ukraine, I would understand, but this will not help anyone or anyone.
What awaits you in the near future? Will you play a tournament in Prague?
I signed up there and I just hope to get there with my ranking. I’ll be out of the top 100. It was the second grand slam after the Australian Open this year, where I couldn’t defend a lot of points, so I will fall significantly. But maybe I’ll be in the two hundred.
How big is the problem?
That’s the problem. I will be happy to get to Prague at “two hundred and fifty”. However, I can still use the protected rankings for a few tournaments, I will definitely use it at the US Open and maybe at Cincinnati. I have a game for these tournaments, I definitely don’t feel like a player in the second hundred. It’s about playing well and going back to where I think I belong.
Footage of the nerve-wracking struggle in which Serena Williams eventually fell. | Video: Reuters