The Estonian has just arrived in Cluj-Napoca looking to continue her solid play after winning the title in Moscow.
Anett Kontaveitt arrived in Romania a day after winning the VTB Kremlin Cup in Moscow playing some amazing tennis and on Tuesday morning met with reporters ahead of her first match at the Transylvania Open.
“I had a travel day but I was really excited to win the title in Moscow and pretty happy to be playing good tennis and excited for the next challenge.”
This is Kontaveitt’s second time playing in Romania after playing at an event in Bucharest seven years ago back in 2014 and she admits she didn’t really have time to get a good first impression of the brand new event.
” It’s been very brief but I think everyone has been really welcoming here and I haven’t seen much.”
The world number 14 can qualify for the WTA Finals in Guadalajara if she is able to take home the title this week and she controls her own destiny after Ons Jabeur who was also in the race pulled out of Courmayeur due to an injury”.
“Before Ostrava, no one was giving me the slightest chance to have this opportunity and I am honestly not going to put pressure on myself and I am just going to take it one match at a time and of course that is the ultimate goal and I am not thinking about it too much.”
The Tallinn, Estonia native will face the Serb Aleksandra Krunic in her first match and this will be their third meeting. Krunic qualified for the main draw and won the most recent meeting back in 2018 in Australia.
“It’s going to be a difficult match and she is playing really well and she played great tennis during the qualifying so she has a few matches already while I just arrived from another tournament so it’s going to be a quick turnaround for me and I will do my best to be ready for it.”
Kontaveitt season picked up a gear when she decided to team up with ex ATP player Dmitry Tursunov and she really thinks he has really helped her pick up her level and the results are showing.
“The year has been so long and it helped when I started working with Dmitry (Tursunov) to have some fresh eyes to my team and a little bit of new perspective and a lot of positive emotions and I have played soo many matches towards the end of the season and it’s been positive towards the end.”
She was asked to give her thoughts on the situation in regards to the Australian Open and the email that was leaked a couple of days ago and sparred controversy on social media and she honestly wasn’t even aware of the situation.
” It’s very tough and I did the hard quarantine in Australia this year so knowing that it is incredibly difficult.”
Kontaveit hopeful end result is that she is able to qualify for the WTA Finals and she is hoping she can get the job done this week in the final week of the WTA season.
” I think that is what all of us are playing for so it would be a big deal and it would mean a lot.”
If she does qualify it would be the first time that she plays in the WTA Finals.
