A month and a half after the Junior Grand Slam triumph, he also won his first victory on the WTA Tour. Lucie Havlíčková beat her compatriot Barbora Palicová in the first round of the Livesport Prague Open. The Czech tennis player receives marketing offers and wild cards after her success at Roland Garros. But he wants to go his own way.
At seventeen, Havlíčková won her first victory on the WTA Tour and quickly climbed the adult rankings. By winning at least thirty points, she climbed to the edge of the sixth cent, or nearly two hundred places.
Moreover, she also showed a solid header, she didn’t convert two match points at 5:4 in the second set, and yet she finally won the match in the tie-break.
“Winning at Roland-Garros gave me a lot of self-confidence and it helps me in difficult times, that you remember what you played and achieved there. Even today, I said to myself many times that I had handled even worse situations,” she admitted.
During a match where a Sparta Prague tennis player lost match points, one of the ball throwers collapsed due to the hot weather. The little boy found support in one of the linesmen and had to sit for a while and drink a lot to be able to leave the field on his own.
“I went to the return and all of a sudden the ref stopped the game, I turned around and the receiver was sitting there curled up in a ball and looking like he was sick. I think he had a heatstroke when the sun was shining on him. I hope he will be fine,” hopes the tennis player.
She herself praises her physical preparation, but her body is taken care of by Marek Všetíček, who in the past trained Radek Štěpánek, Petr Korda and Karolína Plíšková.
“We do a lot of conditioning and that helps. It’s necessary for me to endure such matches and not crumble. So far, it looks like I’m physically well prepared to handle the transition to adulthood. “
While her predecessor on the throne of Paris’ best clay junior, Linda Nosková, doesn’t use wild cards for big tournaments, Havlíčková immediately felt what it’s like to save labor in small ones. tournaments and qualifiers and add a decent points package. for a single win.
“Being local here gave me a free card and next week I got a free card for the ITF 100 tournament which is also a bigger tournament than I could have entered with my ranking. I have two free cards, but then I will have to walk the path alone,” she said.
Grand Slam success has also helped her in terms of marketing. “More and more people are getting to know me, offers are coming in, but you don’t have to go crazy about it and still have to stay in your own way and not take everything that comes.”
She might have a chance to prove herself in the next game. She could get a very attractive opponent in the second round. Estonian world number one and world number two seed Anett Kontaveitova.
“It would be a big challenge. It would be unreal to play with her, where would I meet the second player in the world other than here. I hope she wins and I play,” he said.
