Barbora Strycova has revealed the special mental training that helped her become the doubles world number one at Wimbledon.
It was a whirlwind two weeks for Strycova at the start of July as she had one of the best grand slams of her career, which culminated in becoming the new doubles world number one.
After reaching the semi-finals, beating Johanna Konta along the way, the Czech Republican managed to win the women’s doubles title with Su-Wei Hsieh.
The win meant that she achieved a life-long ambition of winning Wimbledon and becoming doubles world number one at potentially the final Wimbledon of her career.
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Now, in an interview with WTA Insider, Strycova has revealed the special mental training that helped her achieve this goal, “You train forehand cross, you train serve, and you have to train also your head. And you have to train it every single day and every hour,” Strycova explained.
“For example, in the morning I wake up, I train my head for like 20 minutes. And then during the day you always have to check your body with yourself. So you have to check with yourself how you feel.
“I was talking like, no this is good, mistakes happen, and we are not perfect and I just kept saying it to myself and I believed it. And then things got easier. I found myself. I am really happy with myself, how I work, how I perform on the court mentally, and my attitude.
“In these two weeks, I showed myself that I can do it and I can also overcome myself because sometimes I couldn’t before and I was losing big matches and this time I won big matches. And this is the biggest win for me.”
The 33 year-old’s latest feat shows that if you train yourself mentally to change your attitude, the results will eventually arrive.
Also in the interview, Strycova reveals that it was her goal at the start of the year to become doubles number one even though she prefers singles, “It was a bigger goal of mine at the beginning of the year,” Strycova said to WTA Insider.
“I always considered myself as a singles player, but this year I was like, OK, I want to become No.1 because I can do that. It means that the work I put in, it’s paid off.
“But the feeling of becoming number one is something that — it’s amazing that I can be in my job so good. Especially that happen in Wimbledon, my favourite place, that means everything.”
Next for Strycova is the Rogers Cup as she looks to continue her momentum and finish the last years of her career in fine style.
