LINZ, Austria - After a phenomenal week in Beijing, where she became just the second player in WTA history to defeat both the singles No.1 and doubles No.1 on the same day, Flavia Pennetta is bringing her game - and veteran blogging skills - to Linz. Read on with the Italian from the Generali Ladies Linz.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Hello from Linz! I hope you're all doing well.
It has been a very busy last few days. After Beijing we didn't have time to celebrate or anything, and we flew directly here to Linz. Don't worry, there will be time to celebrate after the Masters - we'll definitely enjoy our moment. Gisela lives in Rome now so it's the perfect place to have a few days together!
It's written above but they actually just told me about me being the second player to beat both No.1s on the same day... I didn't even know! I'm so happy about that! It's something I can tell my son in the future :) I'm very excited. Singles and doubles are both really important to me - I'm maybe one of the only players who plays both as often and as focused as I do, fighting until the end whether I'm winning or losing. I'm so happy to be back in the Top 20 in singles right now and also in the Top 10 in doubles. I hope it will stay like this.
I still want to improve the singles ranking. This year has been difficult for me. In February I got an injury on my shoulder and didn't play so well until the US Open. I lost a lot of time. The injury was bad... but I'm happy to be back now.
Gisela and I won our first doubles match here yesterday and because of that qualified for the Masters. It's amazing. We started the year really well, but then both had injuries and lost a lot of points in the middle of the year. Going to Tokyo we had almost no chance to qualify but we have finished strong and now we're there a second year in a row. We're very proud of what we have done!!
Unfortunately, Gisela had to withdraw from singles here - she has been having a few problems in the last three weeks with her back, but she did get an MRI today and it seems like she just needs time to recover. And more bad news... I just won my first singles match of the week but have had to withdraw from singles too. I felt something wrong in my leg during the first set, but it wasn't that much pain so I kept going - I got my leg taped. I think Vesnina started to think too much and made a few mistakes, and I was able to finish the match, but afterwards I realized it's too much, and I'd have to win four more matches, as well as doubles... I prefer to just recover and try to play doubles. At the moment doubles is really important. We're in the Masters already but we want to keep winning. We'll see how it goes tomorrow and hopefully both of us will be in the best shape possible for Istanbul. We really love to play doubles together.
It's a difficult time of year. The trip from Beijing was fine, but there are so many things to get used to - jetlag, new court, new ball - it's not easy on the body. Maybe that's why there are so many injuries at the end of the year. We should stop and think about that a little bit... I'm sure it's the same at some of the other tournaments right now. Maybe we need more time to recover.
It started raining at 10am here... it's 5pm and still raining.
Thank you for reading and I'll talk to you all tomorrow!!
Flavia
