What a roller coaster for me in the last period: two weeks ago I did not know when I would play an official match again, now I’m writing after winning the 6th ITF W25 doubles title [at the end of the article, the statistics written down by a friend], at the first official tournament after the comeback.
But, first of all, I am happy and grateful because I was able to play again on the official tour and I did it without pain.
I came to Bistriţa with the goal of winning the doubles title and, together with Ilona Ghioroaie, we achieved it.
The assumption was that we were both physically fit – she had also problems with one of her knees – and we managed to get it done. Thus we honored our status as main seeds on the draw.
About three weeks before the tournament we were talking, making fun of our bad luck, and calculating that the points corresponding to the title we won last year at the ITF W25 Braşov would leave our ranking breakdown and we would lose many places in the hierarchy (this happened on Monday, in my case, but next week I will recover them thanks to this title from Bistriţa, which will be counted one week later).
The pressure is high because if you lose points and therefore places, you don’t get into bigger tournaments in qualifications or in W25’s on the main draw, so you have to start from the bottom, play and win a lot of matches. If you are injured, you can freeze your ranking and use it for 8 tournaments, but only if you are out of the circuit for more than 6 months. So, with a “milder” injury you have no respite and as soon as you enter the circuit, you have to win matches, and add WTA points.
Returning to the Bistrita tournament, it started for me with the singles match, although I had requested the main referee to play the doubles match on Tuesday, and the singles match on Wednesday, in order to have only one match per day.
But it didn’t happen as I wanted and I played on Wednesday against Ilinca Amariei. A difficult draw because Ilinca is in good form. The match was a decent one for me, especially since it was the first after a long break. I had a few games where I played good tennis with some nice rallies, but mostly I was inconsistent and made more unforced errors than usual.
Otherwise, I was happy that I was able to finish a match without pain.
The first doubles round followed on the same day and we won. I still didn’t feel confident, I couldn’t see the court well and I couldn’t get the angles and shots I wanted. But I knew that playing more matches I would gradually return to the desired precision and consistency. That’s what happened in the next two rounds and that’s how we qualified for the final of the tournament.
A rather tough final. I had some emotions at the beginning of the match and made several unforced errors. We built point by point, stayed in the first set, even if we weren’t playing the best tennis, but in the end, after a balanced tiebreak, we won it. The second one was much better, we both were good at the net and more patient in the long rallies.
So, a most welcome comeback after the 13 weeks of forced break.
Especially for my hard-tested psyche during that period, but also because I managed to play 5 matches and regain some of the automatisms.
But I didn’t take too much time to relax, especially since I still have a lot to show in the singles and, back in Bucharest, I restarted strength practice. On Tuesday, for example, I had two tennis practices and a physical one. Only on Sunday I did allow myself a short rest, after the hellish road: I traveled 10 hours on the way, 10 on the way back, by train and minibus (on the way, from Braşov, to Bistriţa we were three people on two seats).
Friday I leave for Trieste and I plan to play 4 tournaments in consecutive weeks. I’m starting from the premise that physically everything will be fine and I’ll get in good form, progressing from match to match. Over the course of this month, I’ll be making as much time as possible to update you on my adventures on the circuit.
*
On Saturday, Oana won her 41th career title on the ITF Pro circuit, after 74 finals.
She became champion in singles 9 times, after 21 finals [all on clay] and 32 times in doubles, after 53 finals [27-19 on clay, 5-2 on hard].
The title won last week in Bistrita is the 6th in the W25 category in doubles [the other 26 in the ITF W15 (former 10k) category] – the first 5 in Horb (July) 2018 (/ Gabriela Talabă Lee), Platja d’Aro ( May) 2021 (/ Justina Mikulskytė), Jönköping (June) 2021 (/ Cristiana Ferrando), Braşov (August) 2022 (/ Ilona Ghioroaie), Santa Margherita di Pula (October) 2022 (/ Amina Anshba).
This is the first doubles title won in 2023, the others in: 2022 – 3, 2021 – 3, 2020 – 1, 2019 – 4, 2018 – 4, 2017 – 3, 2016 – 6, 2015 – 4, 2014 – 3.
Ilona won her 13th doubles title, the 4th in a row in the W25 category – the second since 2023, the first one two weeks ago -, the others at ITF 15 (10k), the first in 2016 (/ Diana Enache).
