Sara Errani stands only 5-feet-4 inches tall, but she has proved in reaching the Roland Garros semifinals that height doesn’t matter as much as some might think. Errani moves like the wind and hits a very heavy ball. She credits her change of racket to Babolat for her torrid season, where she has won three titles and reached her first final four of a major.
“A big change for me really was the racquet,” Errani said of her Babolat Pure Drive GT. “It makes me feel much better on the court, like I have more power and am not too different from the other players in terms of power and those things. But also physically I worked very hard in the winter – so maybe it’s just a mix of everything that’s helping right now.”
Errani, who is also sponsored by Nike, Supertennis TV, Sportslab and RBM, is coached by Pablo Lozano and her brother Davide also has some involvement in her career. She dedicated her win to the people of Emilia Romagna, her home region in Italy which has been recently afflicted by an earthquake.
She also said that having played on the Italian Fed Cup team with Roland Garros champion Francesca Schiavone, former top 10 player Flavia Pennetta and her doubles partner, Roberta Vinci has helped her deal with the difficult moments in her career. Errani and Vinci are the fourth-seeded team at Roland Garros and have reached the semis. Because she is not a towering woman, Errani emphasizes brain over brawn.
“I have to make other things maybe with the head or maybe with physical,” she said. ” I have to be fast; I have to be resistant, I try to make other things to make the power not important. I don’t have too much power so I have to think more. We like to make the tennis that way, because the difficult for me is when a player is too strong. But I like to make the match on [strategy]. If the match going on that, I like it. It’s where I want to be.”
Topics: Roland Garros, Sara Errani