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Astra Sharma: I always kind of felt like I can play with the best

By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Monday April 19, 2021

After claiming her maiden title in Charleston, 25-year-old Australian Astra Sharma says she is more comfortable facing the top players on the women’s tour these days.

Tennis Express


"Look, I've always kind of felt like I can play with the best, I think my results didn't show it,” she told Tennis Now after notching her best career win by ranking over World No.27 Ons Jabeur, 2-6, 7-5, 6-1 in the MUSC Health Women’s Open final.

“I always felt like in practice I would play really great and be like 'I can do this, I can match them,'" Sharma said, "but it wasn't consistent and it wasn't all the time, and these girls they show up like that day in and day out, every tournament, so I knew the next step is playing not just one game, two games, one set, it's playing a whole match and then backing it up, and that's what I'm really proud of this week, that I had match after match that was high quality.”

Sharma, a former NCAA tennis star at Vanderbilt, jumps to 120 in the rankings with her victory, from 165 (career-high 85). She was a finalist on the WTA Tour two years ago at Bogota.

Sharma now owns 12 Top 100 wins, but before her clash on Sunday with Ons Jabeur, she had never beaten a player ranked higher than 50.

She had to be incredibly resilient, and weather an early storm from Jabeur to win the title.

"I thought Ons played an amazing first set, I didn't know really what to do,” she said. “She was wrong-footing me, she was drop-shotting me, she was just making me cover a lot of court and I couldn't really read what she was doing, and I just thought: 'That's too good from her, if she can keep pulling off these really good shots than whatever, but maybe if I just keep competing, keep showing up, keep doing the right things, those are really inherently quite tricky shots, so maybe she'll waver here and there and I'll get an opportunity to get it closer. So that was really my mindset, just hopefully I can keep pressing her and make her come up with these incredible shots, and if she does she deserves to win."

Sharma said she just kept battling and eventually found a way to earn chances, which she made the most of.

"I think in the second set I managed to get a little sniff and then by the third set it was hot, it was humid, I think I was a little bit more energetic than her and my intensity was still the same so I think that was what eventually gave me the lead,” she said.

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