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DUBAI DUTY FREE TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIPS WOMENFebruary 22, 2012Samantha StosurDUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES S. STOSUR/L. Safarova THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. Good one to get through, wasn't it? Tough match. SAMANTHA STOSUR: Yeah, I mean, Lucie can be a very dangerous player and has got a big game. When she puts it all together it's hard to play against. I thought tonight I served really well. That second set I lost it, but I don't think I did really that much wrong. I had a few opportunities to try and break late in the second set and wasn't able to take them, but then finally did early in the third. Q. When you're coming up against a player who did well last week, does it make you extra sharp going into the match, or is it like any other match? SAMANTHA STOSUR: I think you've got to treat it like any other match. Yeah, she did well; she beat Caroline. But I did well as well and made it to the final. So I was feeling good about my game. I knew that if I was able to play well then I was in with a chance. I think you can kind of forget about that as such. You don't want to be going into match worrying that the player you're playing against is in really good form. Q. You got a cold? SAMANTHA STOSUR: How could I tell? Q. How long you been suffering with that then? SAMANTHA STOSUR: The morning I came here. Yesterday was probably worse. Today I'm a little bit better than yesterday but don't sound great. Q. Quite a lot girls are not too well. SAMANTHA STOSUR: Yeah. I think there is something going around. It's pretty easy once someone gets one thing then it usually goes through the whole draw at some point. Q. Is it the fact that it's unseasonable chilly here? SAMANTHA STOSUR: I don't know what it is. I came from Switzerland for a couple weeks and that was minus 20, so that was a lot worse than here. Maybe I'm just not used to that and it's finally caught up with me. Q. You've had sort of two different careers. How did things turn around for you in the singles? SAMANTHA STOSUR: Well, before I got sick I was always trying to be a good singles player. I got to 30 in the world and hovered around there for a while. Obviously my doubles was more of a standout winning the tournaments that I was winning and all that. It was never meant to be the focus. It just kind of happened that way, which I didn't plan it for that. Then once I did get sick and was able to play again, I thought, You know what? I can be better than that and really probably stopped playing doubles a little bit and really focused on my singles even more. I think it all paid off in the end. I guess some people may have looked at it as a bit of a risk, because if I didn't do better then I wouldn't have been doing well at anything. But I'm glad I did take that little bit of a risk, but really put all my eggs into one basket and go for it. Q. Was there more focus on physical fitness after what you went through? SAMANTHA STOSUR: No, not really. I was always trying to work on that side of my tennis. Probably afterwards I just learned what I needed to do more. And if I was fatigued, not to push the boundaries. If I was feeling good, then you can do it. Probably just really learned a lot about myself and what you need to do to function close to 100%. So it was a good learning curve, and I came out the on the right side of it, I think. Q. Jelena Jankovic next. Talk about that match. SAMANTHA STOSUR: Well, we haven't played each other since the quarterfinals here last year. Good chance for me to try and bounce back from that loss that I had against her. But I think it's pretty different to tonight. She probably runs very well, moves very well, good backhand. One of those matches where I think I've got to really step up and play aggressive and realize she's not going to make too many errors. I got to take my chances when I see them. Again, be good if I could serve well and try and put some pressure on her serve. Q. Going back to today's game, obviously when an opponent wins the second set on tiebreak, perhaps the crowd is thinking, This could be quite tight and whatnot. More often than not, it seems that that player then drops down a level and the opponent just sails through, as happened today. What was that boundary? Did you step up? Did she drop off? SAMANTHA STOSUR: I think through the second set we were even. If not, I was probably the one with a little bit more momentum, because at 5‑4 and 6‑5 I had 15‑40 both times to break serve. She came up with some good first serves and good shots and I wasn't able to break, but I felt like I was always kind of the one pushing the envelope trying to get ahead and just wasn't able to. I probably didn't do enough at the start of the tiebreak and ended up losing the tiebreak. Overall still felt good. Yeah, I think the first break early in the third set maybe deflated her a little bit. And because she hadn't broken my serve, hopefully she thought it was going to be hard to break. I was able to keep rolling. As soon as I got that second break felt pretty good. I think it's just, yeah, the person that lost it not to dwell too much on it, especially because I was feeling good about the way I was playing. Q. Vika pulled out today; obviously Petra is not here. Does that open up the draw for someone like yourself? SAMANTHA STOSUR: Yeah. I mean, I guess there's a bit of an opportunity with those two players not here. Obviously they're the ones at the top of the game at the moment. But there are still a lot other good players and you got to play whoever it is on the other side of the net. So it's maybe an opportunity for everyone else, but I still think it's going to be a tough tournament to try and win. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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