Timea Bacsinszky marched into the 3rd round of the French Open yesterday barely breaking a sweat. The Swiss star quietly blitzed Tereza Smitkova with surgeon like placement of forehand and backhand returns, never allowing the young Czech a chance to find her footing in the match. The 46 minute match only slowed to allow Bacsinszky to tap the red clay away from her Lacoste tennis shoes or for an occasional errant tennis ball being exchanged between ball kids.
Much like the quiet, unheralded nature of Timea Bacsinszky’s win yesterday, Bacsinszky has had an equally quiet and successful year on tour. After a promising junior career, Bacsinszky’s early pro career was lackluster. After managing just a handful of main draw wins on the WTA Tour between 2004-2010 (due to a foot injury, and personal issues) Bacsinszky has found her game over the past two seasons. In 2015 alone, Bacsinszky has won two titles ( Monterrey, and Acapulco), reached the final of Shenzen, and reached the quarters of two others. After reaching the 3rd round of the Australian Open, she has duplicated that effort at Roland Garros and looks primed to push farther into the draw.
Much of Bacsinszky’s success is due to her body recovering from a foot injury she had early in her professional career, but also important is her recovery from a personal pain and heartache. Much has been made of Bacsinszky’s difficult relationship with her mother and father. As she has gained success and recognition this year, her narrative has been a popular story on tour due to its commonality with so many young athletes’ experiences around the world. It has been shared so much that Bacsinszky often mentions her desire at some point to not have to discuss it. As she shared at Indian Wells this past year, ” I want to slowly stop talking about it as well…”; however she was quick to note that “But I understand it’s part of me…”
As she describes, she was born with “the syndrome of pushy parents” who had a volatile relationship. She eventually demanded that her mother leave her father due to his abusive ways on and off the tennis court, and although a very successful junior player, Bacsinszky found herself in a constant conflicted emotional state on the tennis court growing up; constantly struggling between wanting out of her father’s pressure pot and wanting to win. “I always loved competition, and, on the tennis court I know that no one had, how do you say, the power on me. Because I was my own boss actually… even if my dad told me, Okay, play cross, I would say, Well, I’m going to go down the line, but I had to manage to win the match, because otherwise it would not be okay.”
After severing ties with her father, working with a psychologist, stepping back from the situation and deciding for herself who would be part of her life and who wouldn’t, Bacsinszky started transferring her personal success and happiness into on court success. At one point this season, Bacsinszky had won 15 matches in a row. Her wins this year include victories over top players such as Petra Kvitova and Ekaterina Makarova. She has reached a career high WTA Tour ranking of 23 in the world, and is 12th in the Road to Singapore year end championships rankings, with a legitimate chance to make the tourney. Bacsinszky’s on court demeanor has become one marked of a strong will to win, fierce determination, knife like placements of service returns, and an ability to read her opponents game and find ways to exploit their weaknesses.
As the tour enters the final week of the second Grand Slam and then into the second half of the tennis season, Bacsinszky will look forward to continue her success; hopes of success instead of fears of failure. Drawing from the experiences of her life, Bacsinszky has found pride in those struggles, allowing them to become motivation for her. As she so clearly stated prior to playing Serena Williams at Indian Wells, “..(I am) proud of myself knowing I never give up. I have this ability to believe in myself at any time. I think this probably is one of the only things what I’m taking from my childhood, is that I had really to fight until the last point.” This fighting spirit will be tested as she pushes through the draw, but with such a strong back story, it is hard to believe that her own belief in herself will not see her on to even great triumphs. Although Bacsinszky one day wants to stop talking about her past, people everywhere, tennis players or not, can take so much from what she has learned in tennis and in life, reminding all of us that there are choices to be made everyday on and off the court, “all the time this thing in my mind that there is a solution. There is not only problem. There are not only problems. There are definitely solutions.”
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