Mona Barthel (Neumünster) missed her way into the final at the WTA tournament in Budapest, but still showed a clear increase in form.
The 27-year-old lost 3-6,2-6 to top seed Dominika Cibulkova (Slovakia) in the semi-final. In contrast to the previous days, Barthel had problems with his own service and faced a total of twelve break points, four of which were used by the favourite. After 77 minutes, former Australian Open finalist Cibulkova transformed her second match point and on Sunday, in the final, she will face either unseeded Alison Van Uytvanck (Belgium) or Lucky Loser Viktoria Kuzmova, who, like Cibulkova, comes from Slovakia.
Prior to their successes in Budapest, the world rankings-74. Barthel only won one match this year. At the indoor tournament in the Hungarian capital Sabine Lisicki (Berlin), Tatjana Maria (Bad Saulgau), Carina Witthöft (Hamburg) and Antonia Lottner (Düsseldorf) were on the starting line, but they failed in the last round of the last sixteen.
Barthel had eliminated the local heroine and defending champion Timea Babos (No. 3) in the round of the last 16 with 6:4,4:6,6:3 and proved her upward trend after disappointing months. The last time the right-hander from Neumünster had stood in a final in May 2017 – and won it in Prague.
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.