Hantuchova happy heavier
Richard Jago in Eastbourne
Friday June 18, 2004
The Guardian
Daniela Hantuchova, the former top-five player whose ranking last year plunged
as fast as her weight, reached her first semi-final for 16 months yesterday at
the Hastings Direct International Championships.
Now outside the top 50 but about a stone and a half heavier and much happier,
Hantuchova recovered from 5-2 down in the second set to win 6-1, 7-6 against Ai
Sugiyama, Wimbledon's 11th seed.
"For the first time I could do whatever I wanted on the court - it was great,"
Hantuchova said. Actually she meant for the first time in more than a season.
Hantuchova gave some of the credit for her revival to Nigel Sears, the British
coach with whom she was re-united after a six-month interval in March.
"He knows me very well and understands what's going on in my mind," she said.
It is difficult to imagine the enormity of what that might be, but considering
that Hantuchova may have been struggling for nothing less than the continued
restoration of her sanity she handled yesterday's pressure very well.
Against one of the tour's most tenacious battlers and in a distracting wind,
which made the halyards rattle and ring against the flagpoles, she missed three
match points at 6-3 in the tie-break, missed another at 7-6, but kept harrying
her opponent's second serve until she was rewarded at the fifth attempt with
a Sugiyama double fault.
"I have learnt things not only as a tennis player, I have learnt things as a
person," she said earlier in the week. But her victory smile said all that and
more.
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