Kiki Bertens, the newly crowned champion of the 2019 Mutua Madrid Open spoke to the press after her final against Simona Halep. The Dutch player took a look back at what has been one of the best weeks of her career and forwards to the upcoming clay tournaments.<\/p>\n
On the match:<\/strong> \u201cI think I played very solid today. I think at the beginning, I was a little bit searching for my game still, but I think the rest of the match I played really solid, really smart, and I was just going for my shots\u201d.<\/p>\n The \u201clucky\u201d point that helped her:<\/strong> \u201cAs well as playing well today, maybe I got a little bit lucky in the 4-3 game when I hit the ball in the fence and it hit her (smiling), but sometimes you need a little luck [laughing]\u201d.<\/p>\n Did the experience of last year\u2019s final help her?:<\/strong> \u201cIt helped me a lot. Last year was my first big final. It was a really tough match against Petra. She played really well. I also played a really good match and it was really tough to lose that one. But today, I was going out there with confidence, just playing my game, just being busy with that and with nothing else. And so I didn’t really feel the stress today. So I think, because of last year, I felt more ready to win it today\u201d.<\/p>\n Being a clay player:<\/strong> \u201cOn clay, I really feel like I can play my own game. Even when I don’t play well, I’m not panicking too much which, on other surfaces, happens a little bit too much [smiling]. But on clay I feel confident, I feel the balance in my game, so it’s easier to return for me as well because I can go a little further back. So, I feel like almost in every game I have some opportunities, so it gives me a good balance, I would say\u201d.<\/p>\n Madrid, the biggest title of her career:<\/strong> \u201cI’m just really happy. I think after every title you feel something, of course. Sometimes it’s a lot of emotions. Sometimes it is really happiness. Sometimes it’s just not believing. But right now, I don’t know how I feel. I just feel really happy. I\u2019m really proud of this week. I played some good tennis. No. 4 in the world on Monday, so it’s all amazing things\u201d.<\/p>\n Her next goal\u2026 Roland Garros?:<\/strong> \u201cOf course, you always go for that, but it’s still a long way to go. But, after this week, I feel great. I know I can beat a lot of girls. I can compete with the best in the world on clay, so I’m really happy with that and we\u2019ll see in a few weeks who is going to win the French\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kiki Bertens, the newly crowned champion of the 2019 Mutua Madrid Open spoke to the press after her final against Simona Halep. The Dutch player took a look back at what has been one of the best weeks of her career and forwards to the upcoming clay tournaments. On the match: \u201cI think I played […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":76254,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[691,698,689,44,17],"class_list":["post-76253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mutua-news","tag-2019-en","tag-champion","tag-clay-en","tag-kiki-bertens-en","tag-mutua-madrid-open-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}