Barbora Krejcikova was thrilled to be in her happy place — Strasbourg, France — where four years ago it all began.<\/p>\n
When she took the court Sunday against Magda Linette, it was her first Hologic WTA Tour match in more than six months.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very difficult times last year with all that happened, all the ups and downs,\u201d Krejcikova told wtatennis.com. \u201cFeeling good. Happy to be back.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was the No. 7 seed at the Internationaux de Strasbourg, a WTA 500 tournament with a purse of $1 million-plus. There are three Top 10 players in the field, No. 4 Jessica Pegula, who accepted a wild card, No. 8 Emma Navarro and No. 9 Paula Badosa, who like Krejcikova returns after a long absence with back issues.<\/p>\n
But the comeback didn\u2019t start with a win. <\/strong>There were flashes of Krejcikova\u2019s typically smooth-swinging style, but in the end she lost 6-3, 6-3 to Linette, a \u201cfraction flat,\u201d according to the World Feed broadcast. Her movement, understandably so, was not at its fluid best, her footwork a tad sluggish at times.<\/p>\n Krejcikova is expected to play doubles with Linda Noskova on Monday.<\/p>\n The day before, when Krejcikova was asked what a good week would look like in Strasbourg, she paused.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I finish the week and I\u2019m pain-free with my back,\u201d she said, \u201cthat\u2019s my main goal.\u201d<\/p>\n The 29-year-old Krejcikova recounted the odyssey she faced, the debilitating back injury and the slow, grueling recovery process. The pain in her lower back, an inflammation around the spine, arrived sometime in the spring; some days it was better, some days worse.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFirst two, three months, I was in pain like in regular life, on a daily basis,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Krejcikova made the difficult decision to play through it. She lost all four clay matches she played — in Stuttgart, Madrid, Strasbourg and Roland Garros. But then came alive on the grass, winning the title at Wimbledon, defeating Jasmine Paolini in the final.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then it got worse,\u201d Krejcikova said. \u201cIn Asia, I could feel it and had to retire [in Ningbo]. After that, I was able to get it a little bit fixed for [the PIF WTA Finals in] Riyadh.<\/p>\n \u201cThen I had to stop and solve the problem — and that\u2019s what I was doing for the last six months.\u201d<\/p>\n When it comes to mental toughness, there might be no better competitor than Krejcikova — look up her success rate on match points. But for six months, the stress of the unknown, the vulnerability was supremely frustrating.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was very tricky times because I thought [the recovery] was going to be shorter,\u201d Krejcikova said. \u201cI was kind of just waiting to settle down and to feel better. I told myself, `I\u2019m not going to play until I get pain-free and can play without the pain.\u201d<\/p>\n Early in March, doctors told her she could start training again in her hometown of Brno. There was still a bit of pain and stiffness, but she began by hitting only twice a week for an hour at a time — on a scaled-down court with \u201cbaby\u201d balls. One month ago, Krejcikova felt ready to play some proper points when a virus sidelined her.<\/p>\n \u201cDifficult,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause I was feeling quite well practicing my shots. But, yeah, I had to postpone that. So I only started playing points two weeks ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSo not very long, but I was practicing for a long period and I wanted to give it a shot. I want to play in Paris, so that\u2019s why I\u2019m here.\u201d<\/p>\n Four years ago, Krejcikova arrived in Strasbourg at No. 38 in the PIF WTA Rankings — and she left with her first tour-level title. Krejcikova remembers all of the players she beat, including Sorana Cirstea in the final.<\/p>\n She had no idea she was about to go to Paris and run the table there, too.<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d Krejcikova said, laughing, \u201cdefinitely not.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, I had expectations. But it was very\u00a0unknown situation, only my third time in the main draw, so I didn\u2019t expect to go that far. And with the matches, it just went naturally, match by match.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I got to the second week and at the end of the second week, I was lifting up the trophy.\u201d<\/p>\n The last two matches, against Maria Sakkari and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, both went the distance. And Krejcikova — who had seen great success in doubles with Katerina Siniakova — was now a major singles champion.<\/p>\n Krejcikova is one of only six active women with two Grand Slams singles titles. She\u2019s not under any illusions that it will happen for her this year, anyway, at Roland Garros.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why Strasbourg still mattered, irrespective of her result. Because of her history here, Krejcikova loves Strasbourg. She\u2019s already spent time in the city and enjoyed a few of her favorite restaurants.<\/p>\n \u201cI only have nice memories from Strasbourg,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m happy to be back and happy to try again and get back to the level To try come back and fight for the trophies again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barbora Krejcikova was thrilled to be in her happy place — Strasbourg, France — where four years ago…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,661,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-114114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-text","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114534081337715544","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}