By Chris Oddo | Tuesday August 16, 2016
Jet-lagged and overwhelmed, Olympic Gold medalist Monica Puig is also suspended in a state of disbelief about her crowning achievement in Rio. The 22-year-old sat down with WTA Insider Courtney Nguyen in Cincinnati to discuss her experience on Monday. It’s a great interview that you can listen to in its entirety here.
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“I keep repeating it to myself over and over and I still can’t believe what happened this past week,” Puig told Nguyen. “Everybody could see that I was just saying ‘Oh my god’ over and over.”
Puig, who had only won one WTA title prior to the Olympics, said that as the week progressed she just tried to keep herself in check and remain calm. She said the momentum had already started the week prior to the Games in Florianopolis, Brazil, where she reached the semifinals.
“Trying to stay really focused in my routines and probably trying to be a little bit more mentally even throughout the matches” she said. “I did a really good job of it in Florianopolis leading up to the Olympics and sort of carried on through—just letting out the emotions when I really, really needed it and it’s been working.”
Puig has risen from just inside the Top 100 to her current ranking of 35 in the world in 2016, but she says she’s in no rush to get to the top. And despite the rapid rise of late, she admits that the road has been rocky at times in 2016.
“I told everybody that I was going to be really patient with myself this year, obviously coming off of a very disappointing 2015 season,” she said. “Just trying to take one tournament at a time, even though it hasn’t really been easy—I’ve had my letdowns and I’ve had the weeks where I’ve just felt absolutely terrible. Just trying to be as patient as possible because I knew that I was putting in the hard work and that something good was going to come out of it.”
The Puerto Rican, who upset Garbiñe Muguruza, Petra Kvitova and Angelique Kerber to become the first athlete to ever bring home an Olympic Gold medal to Puerto Rico, says it was always going to be just a matter of time before she hit her stride. In the short-sighted world of tennis, where players are judged on their ranking and their most recent results so critically, Puig says she was fine with being under the radar. The belief was there, it was just a matter of things falling into place.
“I kind of like coming slowly up the rankings very quietly,” she told Nguyen. “Nobody has really talked about me until now. It just shows that I was ready for this moment and I think it was my time to shine and finally let the world know who I was.”
She added: “I know the tennis that I’m capable of playing. It was just a matter of time for me to believe it myself. You know what? I know that there’s going to be weeks where I’ll probably lose in the first round, there’s going to be weeks when I win a couple of more rounds or get to the final or win. But there’s one thing that nobody can take away from me and it’s that Olympic Gold Medalist title.”
Puig says she plans to head back to Puerto Rico in less than a week after fulfilling media obligations in Cincinnati—it’s a party that she’s very much looking forward to.
“I’m still really overwhelmed with all the attention I’ve been getting. All of the well wishes and everything—it’s just incredible. I will be going back to Puerto Rico to celebrate this with all of them. It’s going to be unbelievable.”
Many have debated the merits of Olympic tennis, based on the fact that so many players have eschewed the competition, whether it be because of Zika fears in Rio or the fact that the ATP and WTA do not reward points and prize money at the Olympics. There’s also the fact that the Tour’s schedules are so jam-packed that U.S. Open preparation becomes very tricky when you stick a top-flight event like the Olympics smack-dab in the middle of an already busy summer calendar.
But Puig’s inspiring performance has shown us all why the Olympics are so special for tennis. It gives individuals a chance to shine for their countries, and it gives the game an opportunity to show itself off on the grandest of sporting stages. Even though many players skipped Rio this summer, the ones that made it presented tennis in a golden light. No sports fan could deny the passion that the tennis event was played with, or the emotions that it elicited from its players.
“You only complete at your first Olympics and win your first Gold medal once,” Puig said. “I have to wait another four years to play at the Olympics. This to me is even more special than a Grand Slam because it’s so rare to have an Olympic Gold medal, I mean it comes once every four years. I know I’m going to have several opportunities to try and win a Slam but this is one that doesn’t come four times every year. It just comes once and for me to have grabbed it so early it was like a dream come true.”