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DUBAI DUTY FREE TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIPS

February 18, 2020

Sania Mirza

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. How do you sum up the match? Was it the conditions?
SANIA MIRZA: I mean, the ball anyway flies here quite a lot. It's tough to get rhythm. But that's how it is here every year.

I think it had a lot to do with the fact that I haven't played in five, six weeks as well. I'm coming from a torn calf. You don't want to play your best match in the first round. That's how I want to look at it. It's always good to win when you don't play your best.

I mean, they were also struggling with putting balls in, like, with the return and stuff. The ball just doesn't stay on the racquet here a lot. It kind of takes off. You have to sort of find it somehow.

The ball plays really different in the day to what it plays at night. Through the air, it's pretty fast. At least for me it doesn't really stay on the strings as much.

But in the day, when we practiced yesterday at like 2:00 in the afternoon, the ball was bouncing really high. Now in the evening it was bouncing really low. Those are sort of the things that I felt.

But having said that, though, I mean, we obviously can definitely play better, especially I can I think. It's obviously good to win when you don't play your best.

Q. Any concerns that you have that you need to work on for tomorrow? It's an evening game.
SANIA MIRZA: Not really. I mean, I know I can play better. I'm not really concerned about that. I mean, I just have to try to play better. You can't really beat yourself over something that you can't really control. You just have to try to play better. Even when you play really good, you still want to play better in the next match. That's just the way it goes.

No, I mean, I would like to work on a few things which I'll do tomorrow before the match. But besides that, I mean, I think it's never easy.

I felt like I was coming back again today like I did in Hobart. It was, again, like five, six weeks since the last time I played a match. It was the Hobart final. I don't really want to count the few games that I played in Melbourne.

It's been a while since I played competition. Obviously because of my calf, it's been pretty persistent. I mean, it was a three-and-a-half-centimeter tear. It hasn't really allowed me to practice as much as I probably would have liked to coming into a tournament.

Having said that, though, it's always good to play. You have to get that match play in where you get the rust out, so to say. Hopefully that was today's match. At the end of the day the W counts. That's what we're going to look at. It's about winning the match.

We played well when it counted. We played well in the super tiebreak. We played a few bad points, but on the whole we played a much better super tiebreak which is why we won. That's what's important really in this format with no-ad, super tiebreak. It's really important how well you play those important points.

Q. How is the calf? Are you recovered?
SANIA MIRZA: Yeah, it's good now. I mean, today was really a good test for it because we also played three sets. It was really good. I don't feel it. But I do have a physio here in case.

I think it's also a little mental. When you tear something and you feel that tear, to come back from it, sometimes like when I was practicing the first few times, you do feel a little bit hesitant to make the same move you tore it on.

I tore it on trying to run for a dropshot. It can happen to anybody at any point. It was unfortunate that it happened. It kind of sticks in your head, that feeling. It's important to get that feeling sort of out of your system.

It was really good because now it's pulled up really well even now after the match. That's a really good positive.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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