Marketa Vondrousova played her first match since the Wimbledon triumph, and it was a pretty straightforward victory.
The Czech player avoided making a mess of the first-round match at the 2023 Canadian Open, by keeping it in two simple sets, but she faced quite an inspired effort from her opponent. As a reigning Grand Slam champion, she'll see more of these efforts because everybody wants to beat her now.
It doesn't come as a huge surprise to her because she predicted it after her Wimbledon win last month. As the reigning Wimbledon champion and as a Top 10 ranked player on the WTA Tour, there are some pretty high expectations of her; expectations she mentioned in her post-match press conference.
Yeah, I mean, people around me, I feel like they're going to expect so much now. Yeah, I know if you are a Grand Slam champion, the expectations are very high.
It's important to stay just in my small circle and just work on things and just to get through some matches, you know, with nerves and everything and just get used to the pressure and everything. So that's what I'm working on now.
Any professional tennis player has expectations, it doesn't really matter if you're Top 10 or Top 100. As you get closer to the top, the expectations rise as your name gets mentioned more and more in regard to winning trophies.
For Vondrousova it manifested with some slight nerves to start the match but she managed to find a pretty good balance quickly and just go from there.
Yeah, it's always tough to be coming back as a Grand Slam champion. It's something new for me. I was a bit nervous, and I feel like everybody is going to play great tennis, and everybody wants to beat you. So, yeah, I was a bit nervous, but then I feel like I just play a couple of games, and you are back into your rhythm.
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