told Gazeta Sporturilor in 2025<\/a>, her consistency when she wasn’t having a good day.<\/p>\n“The goal is to get a good mentality even when she doesn’t feel the ball very well,” Marti said. “To have a fighting spirit, to be able to win a match even when there are no good sensations.”<\/p>\n
To this end, Cristian and Marti added trainer Pedro Pascua to the team, incorporating neurocognitive work into her physical preparation. They also expanded her options on court.<\/p>\n
“He’s into every little detail, and he made me understand a lot more and a lot better about tennis,” Cristian said. “Sometimes, it’s just very little details that make a huge difference. … The choices of the shots that you’re making, and the directions of the shots, and your court positioning, these type of things. Plus the biggest thing, I think, is the intensity that he’s been putting in the practice. He kind of forced me to level up.”<\/p>\n
That was the groundwork for Cristian’s ability to wriggle out of seemingly impossible situations. When asked to break down exactly how “being a fighter” manifests technically and mentally, she specifies that, first and foremost, it’s about decision-making and shot choices.<\/p>\n
When she was match point down against Joint, Rakotomanga Rajaonah and Starodubtseva, Cristian didn’t fall into the trap of altering her approach — she neither focused on keeping the ball in court nor on upping her aggression.<\/p>\n
“I was just trying to choose the ball well,” she said. “I don’t take, like, crazy risks. But if I feel like I want to do a drop shot, I’m going to do the drop shot, you know?”<\/p>\n
(Indeed, Cristian pulled off a superb drop shot to stave off one of her match points against Starodubtseva.)<\/p>\n
“My eyes are bigger, you know?” Cristian continued. “And I’m just trying to choose wisely, doing the correct shots, and to also be brave.\u00a0Like, don’t be scared of that ball to not miss. You have to go for your shots, because whenever you think that you’re going to miss, or you’re scared of not missing, that’s when you miss.<\/p>\n
“I don’t feel like I was doing a bad match, or that I was not doing the right things. In this moment, the level is there — like, we are both playing good. It’s a little bit of — I will not say luck, but let’s say the choices that you make.”<\/p>\n
Cristian enjoys the extra confidence boost these matches have given her, but doesn’t consider her work done. Escaping from match point down is all very well, but not going match point down in the first place would be even better.<\/p>\n
“I’m trying not to arrive there, you know?” she aid. “I’m trying to start the matches better, because this is a thing that lately I’ve been — not really struggling,\u00a0but I’ve faced it a little bit more often than I wanted to. We are trying to focus on this now, to start better the matches so that I don’t arrive in that position.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROME — Jaqueline Cristian is proving to be the tour\u2019s most stubborn escape artist. By saving match points…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,1602,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-566957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-text","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}