WTA: Hiking, climbing, camping: Sam Stosur gets fit for the season

Sam Stosur is known for her good fitness. Even before her 19th season as a professional, the 34-year-old Australian leaves nothing to chance.

Sam Stosur always stood out. The power player from the Gold Coast made the mirror sunglasses presentable on the women’s tour. At Stosur, it always seemed at first glance as if a beach volleyball player had gotten lost on the tennis court.

Stosur is still considered one of the fittest players in the circuit. Not least because the US Open winner of 2011 tries out many sports – and regularly proves her talent there as well.

Some might have expected her sympathetic “Sami” to hang up her racquet after a disappointing season compared to her own demands.

Last year she was ranked 17th, in 2018 she finished 72nd in the world rankings. Characteristic: In her own country the once undisputed front woman behind Ashleigh Barty, Daria Gavrilova and Ajla Tomljanovic is currently only number four.

But the motivation for the popular Stosur seems to be unbroken. “I want to get my ranking back up. To a position from which I can enter the main fields. I don’t want to depend on wildcards or play qualifiers every week,” she announced on her homepage.

In preparation, the adventure freak once again focused on pure variety. Lastly, Stosur ran and climbed through the Wilsons Promontory National Park with some friends for barely a week. It is located about 160 kilometres southeast of Melbourne on a peninsula at the southern tip of the Australian state of Victoria. “So much fun, so much running – and so much pleasure in the shower at the end,” she wrote on Instagram and posted some pictures of the tour.

A few days earlier Stosur had announced that she would start the season with her former youth coach Nick Watkins. A coach she’d had by her side since she was a teenager. “It’s been almost 20 years since we were on the court together, but we still had a wonderful relationship after that,” the 2010 French Open finalist told tennis.com.au.