Bally’s 2010 review – part two

Written by: Elena Baltacha on 19th November 2010

Bally’s 2010 review – part two

Elena Baltacha (GBR) |

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the second part of my memories of my 2010 season – and thanks to everyone for their kind comments on part one!

Wimbledon and its lead-up is a great time of year for British players but it can also be draining because you tend to put yourself under a lot of pressure to do well. Afterwards, I often take a week off just to recharge the batteries but this year I decided to spend the time on the practice court, remodelling my serve. I had a major surgery on my back some years previously and it occasionally flares up; this season it had done it a couple of times and it was becoming a worry. After talking to Nino, my coach, and Alistair, my physio, we decided that a shorter service action would take the strain off my back and would also allow me to practice my serve for longer and therefore make it more consistent.

You never really know how your game is going to react after making a big change like that – it can go really well or really badly – so I went to my next tournament in Istanbul without too many expectations. I won my first match okay and then went into a second round match against Francesca Schiavone, the reigning French Open champion and one of the most ferocious competitors out there. She had beaten my Fed Cup team-mate, Anne Keothavong, in the previous round and I don’t think anybody expected me to make much of a dent but I played one of my best matches and, if I’m honest, she played a bit below her best and I ended up beating a reigning grand slam champion for the first time in my career.

Next up: Copenhagen for another WTA event which they should have renamed the ‘Caroline Wozniacki Open’! Caroline seems like a really nice girl and I have massive respect for everything that she has achieved and so it was nice to see how popular she is her home country. There were posters and pictures of her everywhere! For me, I beat the always tricky Marina Erakovic before Li Na got her revenge on me for beating her in Indian Wells and Eastbourne. The way she played was a reminder of what achievements those wins were.

From there it was a long flight to Cincinnati and no break at all before I was playing Julie Ditty just a few hours after getting off a nine-hour flight from Europe. The tennis schedule is so relentless that we don’t always have the luxury of time to relax, unpack and prepare before you are on the match court. Despite the jetlag, I actually played well against Ditty only to lose 7-6 in the third.

Tennis is all about momentum and I think if I had won that match, the next couple of weeks would have turned out differently. Instead you lose a sickener like that one and all of sudden the self-doubt starts to creep in to your mind. I played a shocking match – probably my worst of the year – against Ayumi Morita in Montreal the following week and although I played much, much better against Sybille Bammer in the Bronx Challenger, I really didn’t know what to expect at the US Open. I’m only human and though we tennis players pretend we don’t think about ranking points, they are always in the back of your mind. One win in the main draw of the US Open is worth a lot of points and I was desperate to get to the second round at least. Then I drew Petra Martic, the girl I’d blown a set and 5-3 lead against at Wimbledon; suddenly winning that match meant absolutely everything.

It’s not that I have anything against Martic, it’s just that I really beat myself up after losing to her at Wimbledon and I wanted to take all those negative memories and belt them into next week. Looking back, I put myself under a lot of pressure to win the rematch but, for some reason, I was able to channel that in a positive way and I won pretty easily in the end. The feeling of winning a match like that is so amazing that it’s hard to describe and though Petra Kvitova – a Wimbledon semi-finalist – was a bit too strong for me in the next round, I left New York with a lot more than just excess baggage from all the shopping I’d done!

For one thing, my ranking took a step up and it was enough to see me break into the top 50, which was a significant breakthrough and came almost exactly a year after I’d broken in the top 100. It was another step towards where I want to be.

After a few snatched days at home in Ipswich we headed to Asia fully expecting to take in a trip that included Seoul, Tokyo and then onto Delhi to represent Scotland in the Commonwealth Games. I was very excited about the Games, so much so that I spent a whole evening trying on all my Team Scotland gear, including the kilt I was going to wear in the opening ceremony. Yonex were even going to make me a special Scotland match dress and I couldn’t wait to try it on.

As we got closer to the Games, though, some news started to filter out from Delhi which was very disturbing. Seeing the pictures of the Athletes’ Village, covered in excrement and clearly not fit to inhabit, scared me and my coach but the stories of the big threat of Dengue Fever from all the mosquitoes that had congregated about the Village (which was built on a flood plain even though mosquitoes are attracted to water) were the scariest thing of all. I’m not daft, I knew that there would always be a risk of getting an upset tummy in India, and the chances of that were much higher in an unsanitary environment, but it was the higher than expected risk of the Dengue Fever epidemic which really made me stop and think.

Some of you may not know this but I suffer from a liver condition which means that my immune system does not function as well as it could do. Dengue Fever attacks your liver and is particularly dangerous for anyone with a compromised immune system. I talked it through with Nino, talked to my liver specialist and I realised that the risk of getting really, really sick was just much too high. It was certainly one of the most difficult decisions of my career though, and one which really broke my heart.

I had two more events to wrap up the season after that and, as the weeks wore on, I was really starting to feel really tired. I know that many of you reading this will do really tough jobs and work incredibly hard without the rewards tennis players get so I don’t want to moan about how hard my life is, but there’s no getting away from the fact that the mental pressures you go through as a professional tennis players – all those first serves, all those break points, all that travelling, fitness work and practice – leaves you really knackered by the end of the season. By mid-October, it was time to stop.

I spent a week seeing my mum and family in Scotland, relaxing and taking a few deep breaths before the hard work for 2011 starts.

Bally x

Next up: Hear more about my Academy for girls from unprivileged backgrounds – the Elena Baltacha Academy of Tennis

Coming soon: My look ahead to the 2011 season in men’s and women’s tennis

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Topics: Alistair, Anne Keothavong, Bally, Caroline Wozniacki, Copenhagen, Fed Cup, Francesca Schiavone, French Open, French Open Champion, Grand Slam Champion, India, Indian Wells, Kind Comments, Major Surgery, Marina Erakovic, Massive Respect, New York, Nice Girl, Physio, Team, Team Mate, Time Of Year, US Open, Wimbledon, Wta Event

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The Jedi Master says:

November 19, 2010 at 4:18 pm

Hey Miss Bally,

The Jedi likes your blog review part 2, you was right to miss the CW games your health is of greater importance.

The life of a pro tennis player can never be an easy one for all the reasons you have stated above.

Roll on 2011