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Mirjana Lucic Baroni’s Epic Message to Strugglers



After Mirjana Lucic-Baroni reached the quarterfinals at a major for the first time in nearly 18 years, the Croatian had a message for all the players on tour who are struggling to find their way: “Eff everything and everybody—whoever tells you you can’t do it.”

The 34-year-old Lucic-Baroni defeated American Jennifer Brady, 6-4, 6-2, and will square off with either Karolina Pliskova or Daria Gavrilova for a spot in the semifinals.

Lucic-Baroni’s story has been well-documented. She became a star at 17 when she reached the Wimbledon semifinals, eventually falling to Steffi Graf, but after a period of personal turbulence that saw her and her mother accuse her father and coach of physically and mentally terrorizing her, she drifted to the outskirts of the tour, dropping in ranking and even disappearing from the tour for three years (2004-2006).

But Lucic-Baroni returned to the tour, spending three years reclaiming a Top-100 ranking and hovering around that region. Since 2010 she has won 200 matches, but only 74 have come at the tour-level.

In 2014 she reached the second week at the U.S. Open and gave a heartfelt press conference, opening up to reporters about her struggles and the joy it gave her to finally see results at a major.

Since 2015 she has reached five tour-level quarterfinals and one final, in Strasbourg last season.
In Melbourne, the 34-year-old ripped past No.3-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska in one of the biggest upsets of week one, and has not looked back since.

She had last won a match at the Australian Open in 1998. Her gap between match wins at a single Grand Slam overtook the previous record held by Kimiko Date, who went 17 years between wins at Wimbledon from 1996 to 2013

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