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By Chris Oddo | Thursday May 11, 2017

 
Kristina Mladenovic

With plenty of style, and no coach, France's Kristina Mladenovic is having the best season of her career.

Photo Source: Christopher Levy

A booming forehand, touch to die for, athleticism and the ability to win on all surfaces—what’s not to like about France’s Kristina Mladenovic?

That’s not a trick question, the answer is very little, and as the soon to be 24-year-old makes her way down the road to Roland Garros, there’s also another question we’d like to pose: Can she win it all?

It was just less than a year ago at Roland Garros when I started getting visions of Mladenovic being the next French player to win a singles major. It was during a third-round second-set tiebreaker with Serena Williams, eventually claimed by Williams, but something about the quality of Mladenovic’s tennis and her ability to embrace the big stage made me think that maybe she could hold the Coupe de Suzanne Lenglen aloft someday.

Anybody who has watched Mladenovic knows that she possesses a rare breed of athleticism. She’s one of those players that could have just as easily been a footballer, or a volleyball player or a high-jumper. She’s tall and rangy, but sturdy and light on her feet as well. In some ways she’s a little bit like Grigor Dimitrov in that she has a lot of shots in her repertoire and hasn’t always done the best job of choosing the right shot for the right time. She’s also been prone to nerves in the past, and inconsistency as well, but as Mladenovic has become older, she’s become more solid.

There’s a tangible uptick in her game this year, and while she’s not jumping off the page in any of the WTA's statistical columns, she’s a more complete player that is using her experience, confidence and overall comfort on tour to win matches at an eye-opening rate.

Mladenovic has gone 11-2 against the WTA’s Top 35 this year, compared to 5-11 for all of 2016. Clearly she’s comfortable when facing the tour’s elite these days, and it shows in her overall record of 26-8.


She’ll take that record into a semifinal with Svetlana Kuznetsova on Friday in Madrid, and while she would have been a big underdog at this stage of a prestigious event a year ago, it feels like she has a chance to win.

She’s playing at her peak rank of No.17 in the world for a reason. Mladenovic had a .480 lifetime winning percentage at the tour-level heading into this season; this season her winning percentage is .760.

“I'm still the same person, working every day,” Mladenovic said after defeating Sorana Cirstea today in Madrid. “Maybe what has changed is, you know, that the work I put in over the last few years, now it's maybe all coming together, becoming more solid. I'm handling better the tactics, all kinds of shots I'm capable of doing, choosing better the moments of kind of displaying my style of game.

“One thing that's changed a lot, I mean, clearly you can see my improvement, my physical fitness, physical game. Yeah, well, nothing except maybe that I am coaching myself.”

Wait a second, Mladenovic is having the best year of her life and she doesn’t even have a coach? Why yes, it’s true. And if it works for Nick Kyrgios, why can’t it work for Mladenovic? Both are shotmakers, free spirits, and a little bit different.

"The turning point for me—I'm going to be rude a little bit here—I never managed to find a good person for myself as a coach," she told the WTA Insider earlier this year. "And I think that's the main reason, because nobody would understand that thing that I have that is different.

"Sometimes in matches I save myself from incredible [situations] by using a shot that you would never suggest to do. I would not practice that. It's just intuition, a feeling.”

Whatever the reason for going coachless, Mladenovic needn’t question her decision. She should go forth as a self-coach and see how far she can take it. The Frenchwoman may hit a wall at some point and at that time she can begin a search for a coach that she can co-exist and thrive with. But not right now. When you are on the cusp of your fourth final of the year, and playing the best ball of your career, the only logical way to proceed is without caution.


 

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