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CHINA OPEN

October 7, 2015

Andrea Petkovic

BEIJING, CHINA

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. You seemed so frustrated since the middle of the second set till the end. It's the type of match, like, I should win that one, and that kind of drives you nuts.
ANDREA PETKOVIC: Yeah, I was really upset with myself in the second set because I thought I wasn't playing amazing, but I was playing really solid and I was playing well tactically. I thought I had the match totally in my hands.
Then I just missed a few bad mistakes where I didn't move my feet, where my focus wasn't 100%, and I felt it slipping away from me. That's why I got really frustrated.
Also I know her really well, and she was missing quite a few balls. I know if I give her the chance, she's going to crawl into the match again and she's going to play her best in the third. So that's why I got really upset. That's actually then what happened: self‑fulfilling prophecy. She played really well in the third set. She didn't give me any easy balls anymore.
I was there all the time. You know, that's why I probably got so frustrated, because I was there, but I felt it slipping through my hands. Yeah, I was very upset with myself.
Against other players, you can afford to play a few loose games, but not against Sara. In that moment while it was happening, I felt it was happening, and that's why I got so upset with myself.

Q. It's towards the end of the season, but it's not over yet. Can you talk about your season on a whole. Good season, bad season, mediocre season? What do you think?
ANDREA PETKOVIC: Well, after Wuhan, I said to my coach, This is the worst season I've ever played. That was my assessment after Wuhan. But I guess I was quite emotional after losing in first round. I will take that back. It probably wasn't the worst season ever.
I don't know. Sometimes you have the feeling things are against you. That's normally not because things are against you, but because you have the wrong approach to things. Then things actually end up being against you.
I felt like this season there were a few things with the food poisoning during the best part of my season, clay season, then I got injured right before French Open, which is also my best tournament. That's where it all sort of started to go awry somehow for me. My attitude just turned slightly negative.
Then you know how it goes. It just rolled in the wrong direction. Then when I was playing really well in the U.S. I had bad draws. I played Serena and Simona in Toronto and Cincinnati, where I probably could have pushed a little further. Then matches like these today happened to me a lot this season where I had it all in my hands, similar thing with Simona, I actually felt, not as high a level as we played in Cincinnati, but sort of similar things happened. I had it in my hands and I played a few loose games and it slipped away from me.
That's something I will have to work on in the off‑season to get my focus up again like I used to before and play point by point and not let it slip away.
Not totally satisfied with my season, no, to be honest (smiling). But it probably isn't the worst.

Q. That injury‑prone, bad luck kind of story has been the story of a lot of players this year. You set Serena aside, Maria, Petra, even Halep a little bit. Is there something that would be causing all of this or is it just bad luck for a bunch of people at the same time?
ANDREA PETKOVIC: I can just speak from my perspective. But those players are players that really care about what's happening on court. They've sort of had bad luck. I think a lot of injuries come from a position where you're maybe not 100% comfortable in your body. Maybe you feel a lot of pressure.
I feel like so many young players came up this season and they were really pushing from the back. I felt like I needed to work harder. I felt like I needed to push myself harder. Maybe the others felt that as well. Especially those who started the season in the top and who were sort of defending stuff, and people were pushing from the back.
I just feel like also tough matches in the first couple of rounds. It's not like you can get any easy matches anymore. It's just the constant pressure. It's just a very broad, high level of tennis in women's tennis right now, which is great to be a part of on one side, but on the other side it's kind of frustrating, you know, because you can play an okay match, like I did in Wuhan. I didn't play great, but I played okay. I lost in two sets to a really great player who was on her top game. That can be really frustrating.
Then you get in this spiral of negative thoughts and you are really harsh to yourself, you beat yourself up. From that kind of attitude, it's difficult to stay healthy.
I think it's everything together, right? Then maybe you schedule your tournaments not as perfectly because you feel like you have to gain some points elsewhere when you didn't play as well.
So everything comes together, and then it's maybe a little bad luck also, maybe just a little bad luck as well, then it sort of goes awry. That's really frustrating. You have to keep your mind straight in order to get back out of it, I guess.

Q. Can you talk about her serve, Errani's?
ANDREA PETKOVIC: Well, the thing is, she's probably the best on the second shot after her serve because I was really crushing the serve, and she still gets it back somehow. I really don't know how.
And what she does well, I would say, she tries to get over 80% in on the first serve. From the approach, I started the first few games on the line, which is already quite close, and I finished the match a meter inside of the court already on the first serve.
I think just every play on the first ball was more a conservative approach, I would say, like put the ball through the middle and see what happens. You really have to attack it from the first serve on.
But she obviously has played with this serve for quite a while, so she's really quick on her feet and she gets the ball back quite well. Then the problem is you're inside of the baseline. If she gets it back, you have to run back. You're in a neutral position again.
I mean, obviously you have to try to attack it and you have to try to step in and really go for it. But then again, what happened to me in the second set when I lost focus, I just missed so many balls. You're not 100% focused, you know what I mean? You have so much time with the ball flies. You're not moving your feet, you're sort of a little loose. You miss it. You're like, Okay, c'mon, next one. You miss it again. It's like, What are you doing, Andrea? C'mon. Pull yourself together.
It's a little different when you have somebody serving like Keys maybe where you are on your toes all the time and she throws it and you're just looking at the ball. It's something that me as the return‑of‑serve player, I just have to be more accurate, more precise on those kinds of things. Every ball that she puts in, you have to go for it. You cannot allow yourself to miss that many returns on such a weak serve as I did in the second set.
But you have to give props to her for returning the second ball that well. You're standing in the middle of the court. If you don't hit it 100%, you're on the run in the next corner.
Yeah, it's like in nature: things adapt to certain circumstances. She adapts very, very well. She adapted really well to her circumstances.

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