Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championship winner Jasmine Paolini joins the WTA Insider Podcast to talk about her Polish roots and how she has evolved her game to succeed on faster surfaces.
Hard courts make up the majority of tournaments on the Hologic WTA Tour. For Paolini, the son of an Italian father and a Ghanaian-Polish mother who grew up playing on clay courts in Tuscany, that was a difficult reality to accept. The 28-year-old Italian had never even played in a hard court tournament until she was a teenager, she says.
“I think the first time I played in a tournament on a hard court was when I was probably 14 years old,” Paolini said on the WTA Insider podcast. “I may have practiced a few times before on the hard courts at the National Tennis Center, but now in Italy the hard courts are a little better.
“But in our region of Tuscany there were very few of them before, so it is not easy to practice and adapt to young players.”
Listen to Paolini's full interview on the latest episode of the WTA Insider Podcast.
Yes, Paolini is as surprised as anyone that her two WTA titles came on hard courts. Her biggest win for her came just two weeks ago in Dubai, where she won her first WTA 1000 title and skyrocketed her ranking to a career-high No. 14. The victory continued a strong season for Italian tennis, with Paolini's victory coming a month after Jannik Sinner won the men's title at the Australian Open.
Perhaps it's time to stop thinking that Italian tennis is the best on dirt. After all, who can forget the 2015 US Open final, when Flavia Pennetta defeated Roberta Vinci to become the first Italian to win a hard-court Grand Slam title?
“I remember thinking at first that it would be a completely different tennis on clay, which is true, but not too much,” Paolini said. “It's still tennis and it's the same whether it's a clay court or a hard court. [But] I thought that on clay courts you can apply topspin and you can move more, whereas on hard courts you have to play on the baseline and can't step back. So I was changing the game for no reason. ”
What is the key to Paolini's success? accept.
“I was really surprised when I won my first WTA title on hard courts,” Paolini said. “I never thought my first WTA title would be on a hard court, so I think from that point on I realized that I could play well on this surface as well. That's what I said, but I didn't believe it.
“Right now, I don't even have a reason to complain, because I know that in a week I could be bad. I know that I probably don't like the ball or the court. But it's good for me. We know we have the tools to perform, right?”
Gratulache Jasmine!👏🏼👏🏼
What a week it was 🤙🏼— Iga Swiatek (@iga_swiatek) February 24, 2024
After Iga Swiatek won in Doha and Paolini won in Dubai, fans on social media were quick to joke about Poland's landslide victory in the Middle East. When a Polish reporter stayed after the champion's press conference and congratulated Paolini in Polish, Paolini laughed and thanked her.
“When I was young [my mother] “They spoke to me in Polish,” Paolini said. “Now I can speak Polish, but I have forgotten some words.
“For example, Magdalena Frech is speaking to me, and I always say, “Speak slowly, because sometimes I want to say something in Polish, and sometimes I want to say a word in English.'' Please speak slowly.’ My brain is pretty confused.”
Subscribe to the WTA Insider Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app.
