‘Competitive’ Belinda Bencic at peace with her profession whilst still wanting to ‘delete the clay’ season

Belinda Bencic has been dealing with a hip injury that forced her to miss key tournaments this season but she was in high spirits when Tennishead caught up with at the ASICS ‘House of Tennis’ overlooking the Wimbledon practise courts just before she kicked off a grass campaign that saw her push world no.1 and top seed Iga Swiatek all the way.

Belinda Bencic comes across as a seriously level headed professional tennis player. Maybe it’s the Swiss side of her upbringing that heightens these personality traits similar to that greatest of all Swiss tennis players. But when you watch her competing you realise there is a fire inside which could be attributed to the Czech ancestry on her father’s side, who emigrated from the old Czechoslovakia in 1968, and has produced some of the game’s most competitive players like Martina Navratilova and Ivan Lendl.

Bencic has recently made the move to global sports brand ASICS purely coincidentally at the same time as Iga Swiatek parted company with the Japanese based shoe manufacturer. (Interestingly Swiatek is still wearing her ASICS trainers for matches as her new sponsor On haven’t yet got a tennis shoe that is suitable for her)

Bencic said she had worn ASICS tennis shoes in the past and had been impressed at how comfortable they felt immediately she wore them so was delighted to now be able to join ASICS as a sponsored athlete for the first time.

 

Tennishead (TH): Was there a phase in your junior career where you’d had enough of tennis and potentially wanted a break or to stop playing altogether?

Belinda Bencic: “I didn’t really have the phase where I didn’t want to play, but I definitely had the phase, because my dad was coaching me, where I was rebelling against him and I did everything the opposite way on purpose. I don’t even really know why as he was just trying his best to coach me and teach me everything, but I would really be in that mode that I thought I knew everything by myself.

“I think he did a great job of letting me be in that phase, but also having that structure for me that I was still going to practice every day, still doing my best in that time, just going to the tournaments, playing the matches and I kept my level and I played well through it, but I think he had to adjust a lot to my new mindset.

“It was definitely not an easy time but I have to say I always loved tennis so much that I never really thought about not wanting to play. But sometimes I think it is normal that you want to go out with your friends, you want to go to the cinema, you want to just be with your friends more than working on the tennis court, so I think he found the right balance for me.”

 

TH: Do you enjoy tennis even more since becoming a professional player or is it now just a job for you?

BB: “I I appreciate tennis more because I had a lot of let’s say ‘moments’ where it was not going so well. I had some injuries which meant I couldn’t play and in that time I realised I really missed tennis and really would appreciate to be at a tournament.

“I think there is nothing nicer than, for example, being at Wimbledon so I think I realised more that it’s not really about the winning or the losing, but appreciating that I can play healthy, enjoy the tennis and also enjoy the practices.

“I really don’t like the practices as much as I do the matches and the competition. I am a really competitive kind of person, so I just told myself “Okay I really appreciate all the parts of what I have to do in my daily job”.”

 

TH: How do you get over the losses in matches?

BB: “It is crazy because when you don’t win a tournament then you always end up being the loser, and emotionally it is so hard to deal with because you win maybe three tournaments per year and emotionally it’s always up and down. Like every point, you win the point, you lose the point, it’s like always the emotions are up and down.

“First of all you get used to it, because you are doing this all your life, second you are really just trying to accept this part of the game and put your emotions on neutral and not feel up and down so much.”

 

TH: Your results on clay are not as good as on hard courts or grass. Would you prefer to play the tennis season just on one surface?

BB: “I would delete clay and put more grass and hard courts [laughs]. No, these are my two surfaces that I really like to play on but clay I am still struggling. But I wouldn’t want to put the whole tennis season on the same surface because I think that’s what makes tennis so beautiful. You have different surfaces and different kind of players that specialise on the surface and I think it would be very boring if it would be on one surface.”

Belinda Bencic is wearing ASICS Gel-Resolution 9 trainers and their latest apparel range. Tennishead recently reviewed this new version of the shoe now also being worn by Matteo Berrettini which is available to all Tennishead CLUB members through our unique and highly popular virtual tennis club membership.

 

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