World No84 Malek Jaziri is the highest-ranked Arab in both men and women's tennis. The Tunisian will be giving us a behind-the-scenes look each day from Roland Garros.
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My French Open came to an end on Monday and I have to say I’m still confused.
My opponent Andrey Kuznetsov (who beat me 6-3, 6-2, 6-4) was on fire. I couldn’t understand what was happening. The way he was playing was hard to predict.
I was expecting that I would not be at my top level because I was sidelined with an ankle problem for 11 days and I only had five or six days to prepare for the French Open.
But Andrey played his game and he hit winners against me like crazy. I've played against top-10, top-three, top-two players in the world before and I’ve never had so many winners hit against me, and it’s clay, not even hard courts or grass.
I wasn’t fresh and I felt like I wasn’t there.
I practiced too much maybe in the past five days. I spoke to my coach after the match and I told him I was feeling tired.
No excuses at the end of the day. Andrey was better than me and he deserved that win. Sometimes you have bad days, this was mine. You have to accept it and continue to work hard.
I’m glad my coach is finally travelling with me and I don’t think it was lack of communication between us or anything like that. At the end of the day, we’re also preparing for the future, not just Roland Garros. I have to practice hard, there’s no alternative, because I have to be prepared to play five sets.
That’s the thing, maybe I felt tired from over-training but what else could I have done?
I really want to apologise to all the Tunisians and all the people who came to support me on Monday. A lot of people were waiting for me here in Paris, expecting me to do something big and I feel like I disappointed them.
I tried but it wasn’t my day.
Still I practiced very well, tennis, fitness… so maybe that’s a positive I can take from Paris. It’s just a shame that I wasn’t feeling well on the day. I’m a bit confused, I have to confess.
I know that he’s a good player, he beat a lot of top guys like David Ferrer etc… On his day, he can play amazing. And he did that.
The ball off my racquet wasn’t working, my forehand, my slice… I couldn’t feel my shots.
It wasn’t meant to be unfortunately.
I will stay here in Paris for the next couple of days and try to prepare for the grass court season. I’m entered in the Challenger in Manchester, so I’ll look for a grass court around here to get ready before heading to England.
The good thing is that grass for me is better than clay. So I’m looking forward to that.
