Wimbledon: Halep didn’t expect to lose, considers going on holiday
Romanian WTA tennis player Simona Halep, seeded third at this year’s Wimbledon championships, said she did foresee a tough tournament, but did not expect to lose in the first round.
“To be honest, I have no reaction because, like I said at my first press conference on the weekend, I had no expectations for this tournament’, the World No.3 declared at the press conference after her loss to Slovakia’s Jana Cepelova.
“I knew that it would be a difficult tournament for me, but yeah, I didn’t expect to lose in the first round. But she played good tennis today. She was fighting until the end, and she was playing aggressively when she could,” the Romanian player added.
She also admitted that her state of mind coming into the tournament had played a part in her loss. “Life is not always good, but I have enough power to go ahead and just think about what I have to do to do better and just get the good feeling back on court during my matches. I just have to work hard. As I had a few losses before coming here. My confidence wasn’t too high. And during matches it’s difficult because you feel the pressure, and if you aren’t handling it very well, you might lose.”
Cepelova defeated Halep on Tuesday 5-7, 6-4, 6-3, in the Romanian’s first match after ending collaboration with coach Victor Ionita.
On the other hand, Simona revealed she feared return to Romania and that’s why she contemplated going on holiday and avoid her homeland after defeat.
“It is difficult to go back [to Romania] now. I often go back to Romania after tournaments, but today I was thinking of maybe not doing that. Now I want to see what choices I have in going on holiday. I want to go away (…) At first I was surprised by the bad reactions, but now I am used to hearing bad things about me in Romania. It is not really a problem for me anymore, and I do not care about the things that people are saying. They can say their bad things about me, because I know how hard I am working every day. So I do not have to explain myself or what I am doing,” she said, as quoted by telegraph.co.uk.