French Open Champion Barbora Krejcikova sets her sights on Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships title

DUBAI: French Open champion Barbora Krejcikova is looking forward to returning to the tournament that last year inspired not only the run to her first Grand Slam title but a dramatic rise in the rankings that has put her in the world’s top 10.

After ending the 2020 season with a ranking of 65, in 2021 the Czech advanced all the way to the final of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships where she fell in an entertaining match against Garbine Muguruza.

Encouraged by that performance, she went from strength to strength throughout the season; first claiming her maiden WTA Tour title in Strasbourg and then having a remarkable run at Roland Garros where, unseeded, she defeated two-time Dubai winner Elina Svitolina in the third round and saved a match point against Maria Sakkari in the semi-finals before edging past Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in three sets to claim the trophy.

“The thing that I’m most proud of is the mental part, I would say, because for me this was really tough,” she said after becoming only the third woman in the Open era to win Roland Garros after facing match point on the way. “I always wanted to do this and trust me, you didn’t want to see me before the matches. You don’t want to see what I was actually doing, how I was panicking before every single match.

“But then as soon as I stepped on the court, I was just there and I was ready to fight. I wasn’t really thinking that I have a panic or that I’m scared or that I’m stressed or something. That’s really special for me. That was something that I felt that I really have to work on because I didn’t really have this in myself. I think that’s why I actually won, because I just felt that mentally I was able to really handle every situation that I got during