WTA: Sara Errani - "My own country turned against me"
Sara Errani (WTA No. 118) has seen better days. But she doesn't want to give up.
by Florian Goosmann
last edit:
Nov 12, 2021, 02:42 pm
Around eight years ago, Sara Errani was probably at the zenith of her skills: In 2012 she reached the final of the French Open and Maria Sharapova offered a tough fight, a year later she reached her highest world ranking position in 5th place. She also won five majors in doubles and was number 1.
In recent years, however, the focus was less on their courageous and clever clay court game than on the keywords "Yips" and "Tortellini". Errani has been suffering from service problems for a number of years and, unlike colleague Kyrgios, does not use a trick, but rather out of necessity to serve from below . And Errani has one of the craziest doping bans behind him: allegedly, her mother's drug fell into her homemade tortellini, according to the defense.
Errani has long since served her sentence, and she has been thinking about it for a long time. "My own country turned against me," said Errani in a new post on Behind the Racket (even if the interview apparently took place at the beginning of the year). The ITF gave her a two-month sentence, "and the Italian anti-doping organization said 'No, that's not enough, you have to give her more'. That is unique in history," said Errani. Then it took seven months before a decision was made, and they kept saying that she would get a decision in ten days.
She played with these thoughts for seven months, then came an additional eight-month sanction . Errani, having just returned to the top 100, had to start all over again. Even the two months were "unbelievable", "because I know that I haven't done anything".
Sara Errani: "Don't run away from tough moments"
Sometimes she thinks, "Why am I still doing this? It's tough, maybe I should step back." It is now no longer 20 years (but 34).
But the brooding doesn't come too often. Rather, that they should go through it all, face the tough moments, not run away from them. "I'm there because I really love tennis."