Winner of the WTA Masters in 2005, Amélie Mauresmo evokes in the columns of L’Equipe the victory of Caroline Garcia this Sunday, hoping that her young compatriot will obtain the same results as her next year.
Los Angeles 2005 – Fort Worth 2022. The WTA Masters must therefore be organized in the United States for a French player to lift the trophy in singles. Seventeen years after Amélie Mauresmo, Caroline Garcia won the prestigious tournament this Sunday, and the current director of the Roland-Garros tournament now hopes that her young compatriot will experience the same career as her in 2005-2006: “ When I won the Masters, I had been among the five or ten best players in the world for a while. I stalled in quarters, in halves of the Grand Slams. With this title at the Masters, I really felt that I was fighting my demons. It had been crucial in my journey to achieve a Grand Slam victory. I had been stalling for years when I was “supposed” to have already won a Grand Slam, at least I had the capacity. Behind, I surfed on this wave of confidence throughout the winter preparation and the first part of the season with victories in Australia, Paris, Antwerp”. A series of fifteen victories which then allowed him to find the place of world No. 1 (she had already been a few weeks in 2004), before winning his second Grand Slam, at Wimbledon.
An exchange with Garcia during the week
It remains to be seen whether Caroline Garcia will be able to continue in the same way. Her former Fed Cup captain believes in any case that she is capable of winning a Grand Slam tournament. “The Masters is obviously a very difficult competition to win. Less than a Grand Slam because we have the right to make mistakes, which is not the case in a Grand Slam and because it is played over a week and not two weeks. When you gamberge a little, the management over a week is easier than over a fortnight. Beyond that – and we saw it at the US Open but even before – she has what it takes to get a Grand Slam,” says Mauresmo. The former world No. 1 also returned to her exchange with Garcia last week, where she confessed a little lie by omission: “She wanted to know what my background had been and what I had done in chickens. I told her that I had lost a match but without telling her that it was the last of the pools (against Mary Pierce, whom she then beat in the final, editor’s note) and that at that time, I was already qualified. It was not like her who was playing a quarter-final (a third group match where the loser was eliminated, against Kasatkina, editor’s note). It was fun to chat. “Mauresmo and Garcia already shared the same city of birth (St-Germain-en-Laye), here they are now linked by the Masters, let’s hope that the adopted Lyonnaise continues on the same path and goes to win in Melbourne…