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Francesca Schiavone “My Rebirth”
“After every defeat I thought: damn, I have to make changes, I have to work harder.
After every victory I thought: good, what’s the next challenge? I have to work harder.”
After every victory I thought: good, what’s the next challenge? I have to work harder.”
“When i was young I was shy, incomprehensible. I hardly spoke, I was at war, didn’t know the meaning of friendship, didn’t know how to comunicate”
“Journalists only care about the top. They wait to see if your heads will arise, they care about the last effort, when you’ll prevail. But you know how heavy was the backpack that you carried with you”
“My story is one of passion, happiness and fulfilment. Tennis gave me everything and never took anything from me”
“I’ve always lived at the speed of a tennis ball. I’ve been everywhere, never owned a house but it feels like a had thousands of them”
“How many perfect matches we play every year? You can count them with your hand. All the others are battles”
“After my 2010 Roland Garros 1st Rd my fitness trainer and my physio told me they ‘d have run in the Champs-Elysees in their underwear if I ‘d have won RG.The night we celebrated I was abducted from the party and dragged to the Champs just to see the 2 if them running half naked”
“After i beat Dementieva in the Roland Garros 2010 SF i spent 2 days crying. I didn’t know why. I thought ‘if only people would see me now’ but I couldn’t help it.”
“Sitting on bed I though ‘what is Stosur doing now?’ I couldn’t see myself prepare for it. For what I knew Stosur would have walked alone on court for the final. I could see the empty court and the baffled audience. It was 5 hours to the final and I didn’t want to play”
“I prepared the strategy for the match and then something happened that I would never have thought in my life. I called the hotel lobby and ordered a manicure in my room. Never had one before in my life”
“I went to bed thinking ‘tomorrow my nails will look perfect when I will lift the trophy’. Then I woke up and I didn’t want to play”
“My mental coach told me ‘listen you worked hard and you made it. You don’t HAVE to play the final. We can end it here. I’ll be down with a cab, you’ll tell me if it will be Roland Garros or the airport’ “
“Then my mind changed. Wore sunglasses, jumped in the cab and when I arrived at the venue I was ‘pure love’, a mystical and transcendental force possessed me”
“I unpacked the equipment, I talked to the racquets and I was ready to fight”
“After winning Roland Garros everything fall apart. My team split, I lost perspective and when I lost in the Wimbledon 1st Rd I felt really bad and had a crisis. I wasn’t able to move on from my biggest victory”
“In Eastbourne I sat with Kim (Clijsters) and asked her ‘how did you cope with your first Slam?’ She told me ‘there are 2 paths: you have to play as you did before, having fun and all, but also come to terms with the responsibility of having a big trophy. Slam is for champions’ “
“In 2011 I lost the RG final to Na Li. I saw her in IW 2012 she was sad and exhausted. She asked me ‘Francesca how did you cope with your slam?’ I smiled and we had a long and healthy chat”
“The mental aspect is big in tennis. The problem is when you build your own web and you get caught in it. And you simultaneously become both the fly and the spider”
“The most impressive player I’ve ever seen is Serena Williams. Extraordinarily completed. Not only a great woman but also a bomb. When you play her you need at least two tactics”
“During the match Serena can make you feel her personality really hard. In Montreal I just won a point and she placed a roaring c’mon in my face, followed by a big fist pump. I felt it”
“To beat Serena, stronger and taller than you, you need to be like Muhammad Ali: dodge, dodge and hit. Let her run and run. Get her drunk and then hit. Stretch the match as much as you can”
“I always admired Serena also off court. She never show anything of her private world. But when you played her she was all out there. You could feel her brain wheels working hard in her head”
“When i finished my first life, just a few months after my retirement doctors told me I had a cancer and it wasn’t benigne”
“My cancer taught me to listen and to appreciate the people I have around. Chemio has been hard and left me exhausted and empty”
“It feels weird to think that I played the Australian Open longest women match in 2011 with Kuznetsova and now I can hardly face a post chemio nausea”
“I will never forget Flavia calling me and we would talk about both throwing up. For two big different reasons. Flavia has always been more friendly than I was, we have been rivals but at the end of our careers we bond. Opposite characters, she is white, I’m black”
“Flavia would invite me for dinner the night before a match against each other. No way. She has been a rival. If you were in my side of the draw no way I would even have talked to you”
