seeded number 4, the Lyonnaise, who qualified Thursday for the third round, is logically part of the favorites of the tournament. And assumes the objective of winning its first big home title this season.
by Elisabeth Pineau (Melbourne, Special Envoy)
Since her arrival in Melbourne Park, Caroline Garcia has the honors of the main interview room for her post-match press conferences and almost surprised it. Just like being scheduled, as soon as she entered, on the Rod Laver Arena, the central court of the Australian Open. “I did not expect to play on this short. But I was happy to be there and to live there my first victory,” said the French, Tuesday, January 17, after her expeditious victory under the heat wave against the qualified Canadian Katherine Sebov (6-3, 6-0). Thursday, in play conditions this time refrigerant, she got out of the trap posed by another Canadian, Leylah Fernandez, finalist of the US Open 2021, to qualify for the third round (7-6, 7-5 ).
Searish seed 4 of the first Grand Slam of the season was obviously better acclimatized to the Australian Versatile weather than its new status and everything that follows. This rank of world number 4, the highest in his career, is not however a discovery for Lyonnaise, which had already tutored world tennis peaks at the end of 2018 by stealthily integrating the top 4. But she did not think she could taste Again one day to this drunkenness, convinced that he has definitively let her chance.
For five months, Garcia has somewhat lived a second youth in a career long consumed by doubts. Between crisis of confidence, tennis in perdition and recurrent physical galleys (on the back, on the left foot, where she suffered from cracks from the plantar fascia), the right -handed row almost inevitably sank into the depths of the classification, 79
“The level of play to beat the best”
Before going through a second part of the season in a quasi-state of grace: a title in Cincinnati (Ohio), in August, a semi-final at the US Open the following month and, to complete this renaissance, a Sacre at Masters WTA -which brings together the eight best players of the year -, in November, at Fort Worth (Texas, USA), seventeen years after that of Amélie Mauresmo.
The next step is logically to target the Grail. “One of the objectives of this year, or of the next two years, is to try to go to the end, to win a big slam. We will see if I am able to do it, but C ‘ is a great challenge that I want to take up, “assumes at the start of the season Garcia, who has the favors of bookmakers in Melbourne, with the Polish and world number one Iga Swiatek.
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