Garbiñe Muguruza appeared like a bolt of lightning in 2015, at the age of 21, to reach the Wimbledon final against Serena Williams and announce that it was a rising sun for tennis… After climbing to the top of the roller coaster with his triumphs at Roland Garros 2016 and Wimbledon 2017, he fell to the ground with two bad seasons. The wagon went up and down aimlessly while his talent was lost. Until In 2020 he was placed in the hands of Conchita Martínez, who in two seasons has managed to build a team around him with which she has found stability again and has been proclaimed champion of the WTA Finals. “I dedicate it to them, who have been through thick and thin. Look how we suffered at the beginning of the tournament!” the champion thanked with the trophy in her hands.
“We want to do something big,” the former tennis player announced at the beginning of the year in an interview with AS. Wimbledon champion 1994, knows how to listen. “I needed another type of work, a calmer one. Now I lead it more than before because I have vision and experience, and I know how to manage things. Since Conchita was a player, there are times when we don’t have to talk, a gesture or a look is enough,” Garbiñe says of her. much more zen at 28 years old.
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Its strong core, in addition to Conchita, also speaks Spanish, which has underpinned the good ‘feeling’ in the group. They are the Argentines Adriana Forti and Santiago de Martino. She previously worked with Anabel Medina or Vivi Ruano as a physiotherapist. He, for the Davis team from Ecuador as a physical trainer. Martino started two years ago with Conchita. “She has provided very different training sessions, with a lot of dynamism on the court and improvement in lateral movements in a large player (1.82)”, They count in their environment. They are the people who have occupied the Caracas box these days, in addition to Cecilia Caslaits press chief and representative in Spain (internationally it belongs to IMG), and the tennis player’s ‘boy’, Arthur Borges.
A psychologist joined this mechanism a year and a half ago to work with a mind that became more cloudy than was convenient. And one nutritionist, Gemma Bes, who collaborates with Rafa Nadal at his academy in Manacor. “He takes better care of himself, even if it’s not an obsession,” they say of Muguruza’s eating habits, which only “soft drinks and fast foods” are prohibited and, outside of competition, there is no deprivation. He likes to eat.
Muguruza, who at the end of 2019 climbed the almost 6,000 meters of Kilimanjaro (“I wanted to get out of my comfort zone,” he said), passed in November 2020, just before placing himself under the command of Conchita, a few days with the special operations groups of the Civil Guard (cave diving, self-defense, rappelling from an aircraft…). Strong emotions that helped her face the year of his recovery. “Having a bad time increases my capacity for suffering,” he justified it then. At the WTA Finals she showed signs of this.