After the WTA draw was made, the Mutua Madrid Open welcomed the eight best players of the moment to WTA Media Day, an event in which journalists had the chance to interview the players.<\/p>\n
All the players were full of praise for the tournament, the season’s first Premier Mandatory on clay, and the superb quality of the courts in the Caja M\u00e1gica, where ball speed is slightly increased because of the altitude of the Spanish capital.\u00a0\u00a0Regarding the favourite to lift the Ion Tiriac Trophy, most agreed that the strength of Carla Su\u00e1rez and Garbi\u00f1e Muguruza, who are playing at home, will be hard to beat, although Angelique Kerber and Victoria Azarenka also sound like challenging for the title.<\/p>\n
The Spanish Armada<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n One of those pretenders to the throne,\u00a0Garbi\u00f1e Muguruza<\/strong>, called the tournament \u201cthe biggest we have in Spain and one of the biggest four events after the Grand Slams, which shows you how important it is\u201d. The player spoke of her satisfaction at playing in the Caja M\u00e1gica, where she has the \u201cmotivation to play a great tournament\u201d. Although Muguruza is well aware that \u201cyou can lose any game, the circuit is very tight so I will have to be focused\u201d.<\/p>\n For her part, Canary Islander\u00a0Carla Su\u00e1rez<\/strong>\u00a0said that she was feeling good in her first training sessions and that for her \u201cit is one of the best tournaments in the world where the fans are going to have a great time\u201d. Regarding her first opponent in the tournament, Timea Babos, Su\u00e1rez was cautious as it will be a match \u201cin which I’ll have to be very alert and try to make sure the points are long\u201d. As for her position as one of the favourites, she seems unaffected by it, \u201cI’m not feeling any pressure, just motivation\u201d she stated.<\/p>\n Other favourites<\/strong><\/p>\n Angelique Kerber<\/strong>\u00a0was another of those singled out as a favourite by her rivals, although the German did not want to get ahead of herself, \u201canything can happen, you have to play your best tennis and in the end sometimes it depends how you are feeling when you play and I don’t have a list of favourites to take the title\u201d.<\/p>\n For her part,\u00a0Victoria Azarenka<\/strong>\u00a0said that she is feeling good because she has worked hard preparing for the clay, but the Belarussian has her reservations because \u201csometimes you feel good but don’t get the results, but I’ll be doing the best I can\u201d.<\/p>\n Simona Halep<\/strong>\u00a0feels \u201cvery good now, because I have nothing to lose here\u201d, because, as the player pointed out \u201cthis is one of my favourite tournaments because I played well here two years ago\u201d. This means the Romanian is in a confident mood as \u201cI am familiar with the courts and I can compete to a good standard\u201d.<\/p>\n A strong tournament<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIt is a very strong tournament and really tough\u201d, these are the words of Roberta Vinci, Agnieszka Radwanska and\u00a0Petra Kvitova<\/strong>, the winner of last year’s Mutua Madrid Open. Kvitova is feeling good and hopes \u201cto play my best tennis\u201d on courts where \u201cI have really good memories from last year\u201d.<\/p>\n The Italian\u00a0Roberta Vinci<\/strong>\u00a0is also optimistic about the event, \u201cI hope to produce my best, but it is a difficult tournament. It is a great tournament, the courts are quick and I hope to play good tennis\u201d.<\/p>\n Another of the players who also confirmed her good form was the tournament’s number one seed\u00a0Agnieszka Radwanska<\/strong>, who was cautious as she evaluated her first match against the Slovakian Dominika Cibulkova as \u201cfirst rounds are always tough so I will have to be very focused on the competition\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After the WTA draw was made, the Mutua Madrid Open welcomed the eight best players of the moment to WTA Media Day, an event in which journalists had the chance to interview the players. All the players were full of praise for the tournament, the season’s first Premier Mandatory on clay, and the superb quality […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":77282,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[806,708,141,146,228,17,116,820,118,235,42],"class_list":["post-77281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mutua-news","tag-agnieszka-radwanska-en","tag-angelique-kerber-en","tag-carla-suarez-en","tag-garbine-muguruza-en","tag-media-day","tag-mutua-madrid-open-en","tag-petra-kvitova-en","tag-roberta-vinci-en","tag-simona-halep-en","tag-victoria-azarenka-en","tag-wta-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77281","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=77281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}