Mona Barthel (27) made it into the quarter-finals at the WTA tournament in Budapest after beating Hungarian defending champion Timea Babos and has continued her recovery after a difficult few weeks.
The world rankings-74. from Neumünster, who had only won two matches so far this year, beat the double winner of the Australian Open 6:4,4:6,6:3. After 1:52 hours Barthel changed her second match point. Local heroine Babos (WTA No. 35) beat Tatjana Maria (Bad Saulgau) 6-1,6-0 on the previous day.
In the round of the best eight, Barthel will face Belgian qualifier Ysaline Bonaventure on Friday. In May 2017, the Fed Cup player had been in a quarter-finals – at that time she had won the WTA tournament in Prague. Sabine Lisicki (Berlin), Carina Witthöft (Hamburg) and Antonia Lottner (Düsseldorf) also competed at the $250,000 indoor tournament in the Hungarian capital, but failed in the last sixteen.
Barthel said in a tennisnet interview last week in Doha about her difficult months:”I started working with a mental coach last year. And because I also wanted to take responsibility for myself, I bought books on the subject. It was not only about sports, because the normal life is sometimes very similar to tennis. This can be transferred quite well, because the principle is always about the same things:” You wanted to see where the problem lies,”and how I can approach it rationally. It is actually one of my strengths to think logically,”said the senior high school graduate who is coached by Christopher Kas.
Barthel also looks at the competition when it comes to further development:”I also wrote down what my game should look like and compared myself with other players. When it comes to service, she is a big fan of the Pliskova twins,” I like Caroline Wozniacki because I think she is very tough. But at the same time you can see that she is having fun on the course. Caro manages this balance very well,”explained Barthel.