Tamarine Tanasugarn: "I want to be top 100 again"

Thirty-seven years of age and still the smile of a newbie at her first event, Tamarine Tanasugarn has never lost her joy on the tennis courts, even during the difficult past seasons of injuries, and now she is planning to comeback as strong as ever.

In 2008, at the age of 31 she amazed the world with one of her best seasons, capturing her first grand slam quarter finals’ appearance at Wimbledon, right after winning a title on the Dutch grass of Den Bosch beating the world number 1 Dinara Safina in the final.

Six years later, she dropped out of the top 450 in the world, but she still enjoys every moment out there and she said not to be ready for calling a career.

“I guess it’s me, I like to challenge myself, you know, and especially now at my age, right now, it’s more challenging with my body,” she told me. “You know, the girls right now are a lot stronger, physically as well… it’s really more challenging and I like to do that. So, I keep enjoying the challenge and, you know, see how can I cope with this, you know.”

“Right now I’m just enjoying my tennis, but I don’t really plan, like, two or three years ahead,” she admitted with an excited voice. “So, most important thing, I hope I’ll be injury free… so right now I’m kinda like enjoying it all… but you know, every day has to be ‘improve, improve, and doing better’.”

At the age of 37 and in a sport where girls are often breaking through in their teen years, she often plays against opponent that can potentially have half her age.

But she takes even this detail with a relaxed and positive attitude.

Ⓒ Robbie Mendelson

“When that happens, actually, I am, you know like, ‘wow! She’s young’,” she said with a warm smile. “But luckily I don’t really pay attention to the numbers of the age, because, you know, I like challenging with their styles, you know, cause every girl has a different style,.

“I’m looking more at the game instead of, you know, who I’m playing or something like that, so I think it feels good for me if I don’t concentrate on their age but enjoy the tennis.”

Having been for many years one of the few faces of Thai tennis, she is now enjoying the company of up and coming girls.

“It’s good, you know, they are such amazing girls, both of them, like Noppawan (Lertchewakaarn) and Kumkhum,” she said. “They are very nice girls and we are in the same FedCup team together. They are great and they are fun, you know, and I’m kind of happy because during my time I was the only one, me  and also Paradorn (Srichapan), one of each side, you know, women and men, so it was kinda like not fun to travel alone with none speaking the same language, from the same nation.

“But now we are more girls with talent, so it’s kinda more fun, we hang out together, go out for dinner. It’s more fun and they are nice, you know, we are like sisters and we are pretty close, yeah.”

Tammy has been a very accomplished player on grass and fast courts in general, thanks to her flat strokes and low balls, she welcomed very positively the news that from 2015 the grass season will be one week longer.

“Definitely it is very good to have a longer grass court season,” she admitted. “And I was like ‘well, I wished that it could have been earlier, when I was, you know, like in a good shape’.

“But anyway, it’s very great for tennis cause we have longer clay courts’ season and longer hard courts’ season, so it should be longer on grass to be, how to say…equal. I know it’s kinda tough because French Open and Wimbledon are close, but it’s a good news, so, you know like, it’s a beginning to have one week longer grass season.

“It’s already, you know, a good start, so I don’t know maybe it might have more longer season or maybe more tournaments in those three weeks before.”

It comes as no surprise then that her favorite tournament of the year happens at the end of these soon extended three weeks, in London.

“Wimbledon. Yeah, because I’ve always kinda done well there, in that Grand Slam,” she added trying to contain her smiles. “I think the organizers and the people… it’s very very nice. They don’t really go for the big names, you know, they look for the tennis game, they cheer for underdogs.”

“I love that atmosphere because some places are just like, you know, ‘oh, big names’, so they go for the big names.

“Anyway, it’s overall great as in London there is summer-sale as well and there’s good shopping in the city, so it’s everything in the same week. So I think I’m always enjoying Wimbledon for different reasons.”

Ⓒ women's tennis blog

This year she did not manage to enter the Wimbledon draw, but this is only a motivation to try harder for the next season.

“For sure, you know, because at the end of last year I didn’t play much in singles, so I dropped my rank a bit, so my next challenge is, you know, to be back to the top100 again with my singles.

“I know it’s not easy but it’s really challenging and it is exciting to do that again, yeah, of course, you know, either way, singles and doubles, cope with my rankings in top100 again.”

It is an ambitious goal for her, when her best ranking, at number 19 in the world, arrived 12 years ago. But she is not afraid of trying.

“Just don’t underestimate me with the age. The age is nothing so I try to enjoy and have fun in the court though. But actually I have Kimiko Date as my idol so… if she is still fighting I can still play too!”

The Ethics and Hard Work of Sharon Fichman

While most tennis fans are probably associating Canada with the rising star of Eugenie Bouchard, the Canadians are witnessing the constant improvement of a former very promising junior, who is now proving herself in the big tour: Sharon Fichman.

The 23 year old girl from Toronto has this year reached her career’s best ranking at world number 77, confirming once again her constant improvement over the years.

She made her top 100 debut during this 2014 and she clearly means to stay, as her results keep improving week after week. In a lovely and relaxed chat, she explained me how this all could happen:

“It’s a lot of things, you can’t just pin point one thing,” she said. “You know, I work really hard and I know a lot of girl on tour do too, but I just try to be one of the hardest workers and every day I like to look back and make sure that I did my absolute best with whatever I had and I think that’s probably the biggest factor in the way my tennis is going, in my attitude.

“My team is great, you know, I love working with my coach: he is fantastic, he believes in me, I believe in him and, you know, he is not here with me this week, I have someone else with me and he is doing a great job. You just plan you work and work you plan and that’s it.”

Fichman has a great defensive game, characterized by a remarkable footwork and fast movements, but what has improved a lot over the years is her anticipation and how much flatter her shots are.

Despite being 1.63m tall (5ft4), her serve has improved dramatically and so the power of her groundstrokes.

This combination of defensive and offensive abilities has led to results equally as good on all surfaces and against a variety of opponents.

“The biggest thing for me is that, you know, I have my game style, I have my objectives and my goals when I’m playing, no matter the surface,” she explained to me. “You know, you still stick to your core values when you are playing; of course you have to make some few adjustments, a few tweaks, that’s natural, and I do that at the best of my ability.

“But in the end I focus on myself because that’s all I can control, that’s really all I can ask out of myself today.”

Earlier this spring, as an epitome to this improvements, she won her first $100,000 event in Cagnes-sur-Mer and then came very close to upsetting Jelena Jankovic at Roland Garros.

Despite the loss, she took lots of positives out of that match and, like you would expect from such a fierce personality, an additional motivation for the future.

“It’s great to have had that experience, I’m very disappointed still, that I lost, I thought that it was close and I had my chances,” she admitted. “At 3-3 in the third, I had a break point I didn’t convert, I learnt from it and next time I’ll just be more prepared, be ready.

“I look forward to playing her and other top players again and learning from my mistakes and correcting it.

“I’m always looking forward, how can I get better, how can I improve and I know that one of the things that comes along with improving is you have better opponents. Obviously every single person you play on every given day, you know, anything can happen, everyone is out there to win and compete hard and fight, but of course as you play bigger events you’re gonna play players that are more accomplished in their careers and I expect a tough battle every time I’m gonna play such players.”

 Despite her lovely Canadian accent when speaking and her undeniably big love for her home country –as much as she named “making history with the Canadian team” as one of her best memories on a tennis court-, if you happen to follow one of her matches, you will soon realize that her way of cheering for points comes from somewhere else.

“My family, my background is eastern European: they are Romanian and Hungarian, so “haide” is “c’mon” in Romanian, so… I don’t know, it’s something that, growing up with my parents coming to matches supporting me, sometimes they would just say something in another language and I guess it just stuck with me.

“I don’t speak other than English, well, my French is decent, my Hungarian is decent, you know, my Romanian ehmmm…” and she paused herself with a funny face.

So where does she go from here?

“I don’t like putting numbers on things because you can’t control numbers,” she said. “You know, it’s such a cliché-answer but I just want to keep improving every day and I want to get more confident.

“I’m confident on my ability but I just want to keep doing it every time I’m on court and keep pushing myself, you know, and put myself in tougher situations and come out of it the best I can.

“I just want to keep playing bigger tournaments and improving and learning and getting better and I think that, at the end of the day, it is the most important thing. I think that is gonna get me to the numbers and, you know, the ranking and the seeding and all that stuff that comes with them.”

Surely tennis fans will look for her names during the American summer on hard courts, including the home event of the Rogers Cup in Montreal. But, as she said, there is one event that cannot compare with others for her:

“I love playing at home, but I think my favorite, the one that I enjoy, you know, I always look back on - and I think it’s just the city and everything - I love the Us Open, I love New York City. It’s super fun, it’s just a great place."

The most remarkable aspect of this tenacious girl came about in the very last question I asked. There are lots of players that have great work ethics, but it is not as frequent to see such a great passion for the sport and yet respect for the opponents as she honestly expressed.

She named many girls when I asked about her best friends on tour: Maria Sanchez, Johanna Konta, Olga Savchuk.

Then she added: “I mean, let me be honest with you, this is such a tough career path and I respect everybody that chooses to do it. You know, because it is such a difficult career path, you needs some remarkable people along the way and I’m fortunate to know a lot of people that kinda are on the same path as me.

“I hope they see me in that way too and it’s hard to just pinpoint a handful of people, but overall there are great people on tour, guys and girls.”