Australian Open: Mirjana Lucic-Baroni with best memories after Melbourne

For Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, the first weeks of the 2017 season were truly fantastic. However, the Croatian must confirm her successes in the coming weeks.

Mirjana Lucic-Baroni’s 2017 season had got off to an incredibly good start: The Croatian had reached the semi-finals in the first big event of the year, the Australian Open. Particularly impressive was the success against Karolina Pliskova, even though Lucic-Baroni had no commission in the preliminary round against the later winner Serena Williams. At the end there is a 32. Ranked first in the WTA World Ranking as a balance sheet in the yearbooks: tidy, but a little bit disappointing after such a start.

And, of course, with the mortgage of having to defend a great many points even in Melbourne. Mirjana Lucic-Baroni takes on this challenge confidently at the age of 35.

“I’ve worked incredibly hard, but it’s been fun,”Lucic-Baroni is quoted on the WTA website,”I really want to go on the pitch and try to get such great results again. That’s my biggest motivation.”

After the coup in Australia, Lucic-Baroni again made it to the semi-finals in Acapulco, but lost to Lesia Tsurenko. The Croatian in Miami in Charleston was able to set the final highlights. On Key Biscayne it had reached the last eight, but Karolina Pliskova took revenge for the bankruptcy of Melbourne. In Charleston, however, the semi-final against Yelena Ostapenkko was over.

This was followed by difficult months with few victories, the last performance of Mirjana Lucic-Baroni from the year 207, dated from the US open. There she lost in round two against Carla Suarez Navarro. The anticipation of the coming season has not aborted this.

“Sometimes, when it gets really difficult during strength training, when I can’t move anymore and I’m actually dead, my fitness coach Blaine Bott finds a really good way to motivate me,” Lucic-Baroni continues.”He reminds me of the matches at the Australian Open, sometimes even shows me a few minutes of it to motivate me. I feel a lot of energy, and I draw a lot of positive energy from these matches.”