[新聞] A miserable year nears an end
A miserable year nears an end
Stuttgart. Life is full of ups and downs and Amelie Mauresmo, who lost in the
first round of the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix, can testify to that better than
most players on the WTA Tour.
Things could not have been much better in 2006, as she won her first Grand
slam title at the Australian Open and followed up with another at Wimbledon.
This year began well too, with a title in Antwerp and a runner-up finish in
Dubai. Then it all fell apart. The 2004 and 2005 Porsche Tennis Grand Prix
finalist had to undergo surgery for appendicitis, and the effects of that have
dogged her ever since. This week, the former world number one slumped out of
the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in the first round,losing in straight sets to
Elena Dementieva. “I had the surgery and since then I definitely haven't felt
the way I did before. It’s frustrating,” said Amelie Mauresmo, finding it
hard to mask her disappointment. “I didn’t think my body would have this kind
of trouble to recover, and it definitely affected me more than I thought it
would.” Refusing to believe what her body was telling her, Mauresmo tried to
come back far too early. It began in Berlin, where she lost in the third round
to Julia Vakulenko, and the misery continued with an opening round loss in Rome
to Samantha Stosur. Her hopes were raised when she played a small tournament in
Strasbourg and reached the final, but reality stepped in again the following
week in Paris.
Being who she is, and carrying the hopes of a nation, she had no choice but
to play at Roland Garros. But she knew she wasn’t ready, and she struggled
through two matches before losing to Lucie Safarova. “I think it was a mistake
to play there, but I didn’t know how fast I was going to come back or not, and
now that I have that experience and looking back I can see it was a mistake,ꄊsaid Mauresmo. “But at the time I definitely wasn’t able to know I was not
ready or it was too early.”
A champion such as Mauresmo can often disguise or overcome adversity, at least
for a while, and so it proved when she moved from clay to grass. She reached
the Eastbourne final, but when it came to defending her title at the All
England Club she fell far short, going out in the fourth round to Nicole
Vaidisova. The struggle was back on, and after keeping to her commitment to
play the Fed Cup semi-finals against Italy and dropping one of her matches to
Francesca Schiavone, Mauresmo hit a low and stepped away from the game for
several weeks.
She hired a boat and sailed around Sardinia in an effort to relax and rekindle
her love for the game, but it was a struggle. When she met up with her coach
again in France she was suffering from a groin strain and felt she was still
not ready to play, and she took the dramatic step of deciding not to play the
US Open. Dedicating herself to trying to get fit again, she eventually picked
up her racquet during the second week of September. At first she thought she
would merely like to get a few matches during the rest of the season, but the
competitive fires quickly began to burn again and she was bitterly disappointed
to fall to Dementieva in the Porsche Arena.
Was the low point of her year not being able to make a realistic bid for the
French Open title? No. What really hit her hard was the cause of all her
distress, actually developing appendicitis. “The surgery was the low point of
the season,” she said. “I don’t care about not being able to play the French
if the rest of the season had been great. But after Wimbledon I think the body,
the mental, was going down and I definitely needed some time off to relax and
make sure I really wanted to take the racquet back before doing so. It was
great to get away because I felt I needed that. Looking back it was what I had
to do, but then I’ve had to fight to find my best level again.”
That has been difficult. She went to Beijing, but after not playing for more
than two months she lost in the second round. Then came the Porsche Tennis
Grand Prix, where she stood in the final in 2004 and 2005. She played a poor
first set against Dementieva in Stuttgart, but had the small consolation of
feeling that her game was finally coming together again as she made a strong
challenge in the second set. She was getting closer to where she wanted to be.
Now, as she heads to Moscow and Zurich, she might have an advantage over many
of the other players. They’ve had a full season and are becoming tired.
Mauresmo is fresher than most, so will that count in her favour?
“Yes and no,” she said, “because obviously indoors is a little bit better
for me and I don’t feel like it’s the end of the season. I’m just coming
out from a few weeks of rest and I don’t feel like I usually do at this time
of year. That could be an advantage, but I really do need to get my rhythm
back. If I can go forward in some tournaments in the next couple of weeks then
it will come and I’m looking forward to that. But for now my lack of matches
is a disadvantage because the rhythm is not here.”
03/10/2007
來源:
http://www.porsche-tennis.de/prod/pag/tennis.nsf/web/english-tournament_
pressreleases_T07_0058_en#pagetop
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※ 編輯: lynn7117 來自: 61.228.106.32 (10/04 23:31)
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