With French Open in the past, Shnaider sets focus on fourth Wimbledon

WIMBLEDON -- Diana Shnaider has Roland Garros well in the past. 

The 22-year-old reached her first Grand Slam semifinal in Paris, a run that boosted her to No. 15 on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz. While the road to the final four was memorable, Shnaider has her eyes set on her fourth career Wimbledon at the All England Club. 

"To be honest, I wasn't thinking too much about it," Shnaider said to wtatennis.com on the Roland Garros result. "I was just going back home for a few days, just to relax a little bit and spend time with my family. Then for me, it was more about going on grass to get used to the new surface. I spent five days at home and then I was already flying to Berlin.

"Overall, I feel [Roland Garros] was just a great run, great tournament, some very good matches and some great tennis that I showed there. But I feel for me and for [coach] Sascha [Bajin] was more that we tried to do the same in the next tournaments or better. We know what we like accomplished for sure. We really cherish it, and then we just take pluses and minuses from the loss and the wins, and carry it with us on grass."

Shnaider played the two WTA 500 events in Berlin and Bad Homburg in the buildup to Wimbledon, but fell in the first round of both. 

She enjoys playing on the grass, and has won one of her five career singles titles on the surface, in Bad Homburg two years ago. 

"I don't mind grass at all," Shnaider said. "My game is pretty good on the surface. Sometimes, it's hard because it's always different. You come to one tournament, it's slower, and then you go to the next week, it's faster. You don't have really much time to practice because it's very limited."

That unpredictability of grass can even be narrowed down within Wimbledon's grounds itself. Shnaider said the grass on the practice courts can differ slightly than the match courts, adding that when she had her first practice on a match court, she felt the grass was longer. 

"I could feel my steps, and I would just kind of like fall into the ground, which makes it like much slower [and]the bounce is very low," Shnaider said. "Then I had practice at Aorangi (practice courts), and the grass was shorter, so it was much faster and the bounces were a little higher.

"It was like, 'oh, there is an epic, big change.' Today I was practicing, it got a little bit shorter, so it was a little bit faster, like practice courts. Definitely us players, we can still feel the difference that it's not the same."

Despite grass' unpredictability, Shnaider's entering Wimbledon with the mindset of controlling what she can control, mirroring what she had at the French Open. 

"It's tennis, it's very hard to predict anything," Shnaider said. "Everything can go super weird, and everything can change. The most important is the mindset that I have at the French Open and now is what I can do to help myself, to achieve the result that I want.

"Not taking how my opponent is going to play because she can play unbelievably, not taking the weather or whatever circumstances. So it just depends on me, I just do the best that I can each day, and that's it."

Shnaider seeks to reach the second week at Wimbledon for the first time, and will face Germany's Eva Lys on Tuesday.