Love set with Caroline Garcia
Women’s tennis is experiencing a renaissance with the numerous young talent on tour. And Caroline Garcia is one of the brightest new stars!
Garcia represents France, but is of Spanish decent. She has now won five singles crowns and six doubles titles on the Women’s Tennis Association tour.
Though she has yet to get a breakthrough win in the Majors for singles, she won the French Open Doubles with fellow French stalwart Kristina Mladenovic in 2016.
She led her country to the finals of the Fed Cup that same year, which was their first since 2005.
She is looking to break new ground in 2018 after a tremendous end to last year with consecutive wins at Wuhan and Beijing.
Philippine Star: Towards the end of 2017, you were playing so well, you had an 11-match win streak, you’re confidence must’ve been at an all-time high?
Caroline Garcia: I don’t feel very different on court winning 11 matches straight than not. I mean, it feels good, for sure, to have so many wins like this behind me, but I know tennis can go very fast in one way or another. So I’m just staying myself, staying humble at practice, keep improving, keep working out.
I know all these matches were very hard. Some were very tight, and it could change from one way to another. So I just keep doing what I do best and keep working out, and stay focused.
Back in 2011, Andy Murray said that you were going to be number one in the world someday. What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, everyone heard it. I mean, at that time, 2011 was difficult for me to manage the pressure that went with his tweet but because I was not ready in my game and in my head, so I took a lot of experience from it. I worked out every single day to make this happen so I know it’s a long way, but I’m getting there slowly. I’ll do my journey, and I will see how far it brings me.
Women’s tennis is so open these days while Serena gets back into shape, and there are so many young talents coming up too.
Yeah, I think this year and the last couple of years outside of Serena there are a lot of players, but I think we can see that, like for example, (Garbine) Muguruza or (Simona) Halep are here now and doing very well. There is always a change in generations, and we can see a couple of players, young ones coming, and I consider myself part of this new group.
It’s hard to stay at the top, and more difficult after someone like Serena. But she is still coming back, so we have to be ready for her, for sure. We got used to have someone who was dominating the women’s tennis, but now it’s changing a little bit, but we can see some players who are still in the Top 10 a couple of times now.
You came out with your #FlyWithCaro hashtag, any expansion plans?
No. That’s the plan of the hashtag. Just stay with it. No, it came up like a couple years ago in Fed Cup. One of the team members came up with it. It was a very special week for me and for Team France. We thought it was nice and funny, too, and different from all the others, so I’ll stay with it.
You have always talked about staying in the present. Why?
For sure it’s very important to stay in the present and enjoy every minute, and you can still think about the past or the future, but you have to learn how you work, and for me, it doesn’t work for me very well. So I just try to enjoy every minute. And actually, we are very busy everyday, so it’s kind of difficult to think about the next day, or everything everyday flies away, so I just really want to enjoy. I know it’s a great experience that not everyone can have it, so I just want to live every single minute the most I can.
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