MUTUA MADRID OPEN

April 28, 2021

Elina Svitolina

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. I'm writing an article about playing lefties. I know you have a lefty opponent in the first round. When you're playing a lefty, do you try to find someone you can hit with who is a lefty to help get you ready? Do you and your team spend more time on either the tactics involved or the mental aspect of dealing with everything kind of being mirror-imaged?

ELINA SVITOLINA: Yeah, for sure you try to find someone left-handed, but last week I played two girls quite high level left-handed, so it was not easy to find someone right now.

But for sure you think a little bit differently. You try to do the plan for the match a bit differently, because obviously they have a different spin, they have a different angle that you have to play, and I do some patterns which I think that gonna work for the left-hander.

Q. Is there a bigger difference on serve or return of serve or on groundstrokes and during the course of the rally?

ELINA SVITOLINA: Well, for sure every rally starts with the return or serve, so that's I would say one of the major thing.

Q. You had a good run last week in Stuttgart, getting to the semis. Is it difficult to turn right around and get reset this week for Madrid?

ELINA SVITOLINA: I wouldn't say that it's tough because, you know, when you have some good matches under your belt, especially on different surface that you just changed to, that's not a bad thing.

It's always nice to play the big tournaments because obviously you have big motivation. Yeah, I'm happy to be here, and I don't really think about any other things (smiling).

Q. What did you learn from your match playing against Ash Barty last weekend in the semifinals at Stuttgart?

ELINA SVITOLINA: It was a really tough battle, really tough loss I would think for me, because I was serving for the match and had the opportunity to close the match. That was disappointing, I would say.

But it was a good level, you know. There was a good level. I think we were both playing quite good, and in the end I have to take positives out of it and try to build on that and, yeah, bring the good mentality and good game for this tournament and onwards.

Q. Welcome to Madrid. I'm just wondering if you look back to what you did on previous years when you're coming to a tournament like for example Madrid or you just want to start clean?

ELINA SVITOLINA: For sure I think the previous experience of what have been working, what haven't been working, that's definitely important, because, you know, here is a little bit of altitude, a little bit of different conditions to all the tournaments in general on clay, because normally clay is playing a bit slow. Here pretty much is the quickest that we play on. That's for sure the experience for the past years that I had before.

So, yeah, I just try to -- each year for sure it's a bit playing differently because each year you are a bit of a different player, I would say (smiling). That's why you have to start from the beginning but with the little baggage of the experience.