Tenth time lucky! Jarmila Gajdosova ends round-one Australian Open curse

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World No.62 Jarmila Gajdosova came to the 2015 Australian Open knowing that she would either sink deeper or end her terrifying record of nine straight first-round losses at Melbourne Park, which actually included 11 straight losses if her 2004 & 2005 qualifying defeats were included. Fortunately for the Australian born in Slovakia, the unlucky stretch came to an end this time around, as Jarka ousted Alexandra Dulgheru of Romania 6-3 6-4 on the tournament’s opening day that said goodbye to many seeded players, including No.5 Ana Ivanovic and No.9 Angelique Kerber.

Had Jarka still believed in her ability to win a match at the Australian Open?

If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be playing would I?

Gajdosova’s first-round triumph is a continuation of her successful start to the 2015 season, as last week in Sydney she recorded victories over two Top 20 players, Andrea Petkovic and Dominika Cibulkova. Her next challenge will be a big one, another Romanian, third-seeded Simona Halep.

I’d like to note that even though Jarka’s singles performance at the Australian Open has been very modest, one of her greatest career achievements actually came at the Australian Open stage in 2013 when she won the mixed doubles title with compatriot Matthew Ebden.

After Venus Williams herself, Gajdosova is the most prominent promoter of Venus’ tennis apparel brand EleVen. Gajdosova is debuting the EleVen Ola Print Aussie Dress, that I talked about in detail in my presentation of the EleVen Ola collection, and Venus made sure to celebrate the extra exposure of her design on Twitter.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Tennis Island, definitely. I can’t even imagine how tough on self-confedence it is and how much of it you need to push through. Here’s Jarmila’s quote that I found on Women Who Serve:

    “…I did try so hard for all these years to make it through. It meant so much to me to finally do it in front of my home crowd. They been cheering for so long and so well it was really important. It meant the world to me. As I said, whatever is going to happen now, I can just forget about that. There is no more ten year anniversary.”

    http://womenwhoserve.blogspot.com/2015/01/australian-open-what-they-said.html

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