By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Monday December 12, 2022
Caroline Garcia rediscovered her joy - and her lethal tennis - in 2022 and the results were mind-blowing.
Photo Source: Getty Images
With the 2022 tennis season done and dusted and in the rearview, Tennis Now is circling back to bask in the glory of what was a truly phenomenal tennis season.
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Today we take a closer look at the rejuvenation of Caroline Garcia.
Garcia took the script and flipped it in 2022, and in the process showed the tennis world what type of damage a streamlined, hyper-aggressive game could do on the women’s tour. It was nothing short of spectacular.
How did she do it?
Garcia’s fortress was built on a foundation of fitness and self-belief. After hiring coach Bertrand Perret and physiotherapist Laura Legoupil at the end of 2021, Garcia started to take steps in the right direction.
The first challenge? Remedy the foot injury that had been plaguing every aspect of her game. Next? Start to rediscover the scintillating all-out attacking game that made her a sensation in 2017 and 2018.
"I really try to go with what I do the best," Garcia said at the conclusion of the season. "So obviously being aggressive and going for my shots. We had a great capability with the team to really adjust to the different surfaces to physically feel good on every surface. And it was really important. And we prepared very well for every tournament to be really focused on what I wanted to do. And with the results coming it was obviously easier to believe in it."
By summer she was ready to hit the ground running. Garcia won 29 of 33 matches during a scorching stretch that took her through titles on all three surfaces – in Bad Homburg, Warsaw and Cincinnati – and into her first major semifinal, at the US Open.
Garcia would fall to Ons Jabuer in New York, but she continued to push down the stretch and was rewarded with a title at the prestigious WTA Finals, where she became the first Frenchwoman to win since Amelie Mauresmo in 2005.
It took Garcia several months to hit her stride, but once she did she was absolutely lethal. She had a record of 7-9 and finished at 45-20.
She went 8-4 against the Top-10 (compared to 1-10 in the previous three seasons) and won 80.3 percent of her service games.
It all added up to a monumental rise in the rankings, from 74 at the start of the season to No.4 at year-end.
“I think it's super important to keep improving," she said. "We said ‘If you don't move forward, you move backward.’ So that's not something we want to do in the team and I don't want to do it, either. I did it a couple years ago, and didn't really enjoy the ride."
Can she take it higher in 2023? It won’t be easy, as she has since parted ways with coach Perret, but the blueprint for success is most certainly there on all surfaces.