A very good day

Hello, I’m Alisa Kleybanova and I’ll be doing the blog for Sports.ru from Roland Garros. I’d like to thank Hôtel Lancaster for the help in organizing my blog.

It’s been a very good day – I’ve had a good sleep, then a warm-up and a great doubles match. In spite that Jelena hadn’t played doubles for quite a long time, we did well considering it was the first match. Our competitors weren’t comfortable to play against, so the match can’t be called and easy one. I think it’s because we played great in all defining moments we won with such a solid score.

We’ll now play against Black and Huber, I’d played agait them on almost every tournament and at last, after series of defeats I managed to win from them at Indian Wells. Jelena and me play in an active and powerful style, so there’re no special directives for the coming match. We’ll try to do, what we do best. But that is later, cause I’m playing mixed tomorrow.

We agreed to play with my current partner – Bruno Soares – in Australia, and there again it happened by chance we both had no one to play with. Same story as in doubles. The thing is that it’s hard to get into the mixed because of the rating, there’re less places in the draws, and lots of high-ranked players.

For me, to get in the draws, I need to be listed with someone ranked in top-30 in men singles, most of them have long settled partenrships. Novices have to show their worth tp be invited to play together by top players. Singles differ from doubles and mixed a lot, it’s completely different tennis. Tomorrow’s match is against a very strong couple. I’m ot that experienced in mixed yet, so I can’t even imagine what I’m to face tomorrow. But anyway I’ll do my best.

And finally I’m gonna answer a question asked by user named «Less» about my friends

I don’t have any friends since childhood, I’ve started doing sports professionally very early, ad sports consumes all the free time. I studied not in the ordinary school but in the extern one in order to have time for practice. All my friends are competition mates or friends of my coach. All of them are from different countries. Sometimes we stay at their places during the tournaments and keep in touch on the web. And my friends at home are those tennis girls who I competed against and grew up professionally together – Katya Makarova, Jenya Rodina and others

See you tomorrow!