Surprise:<\/strong> \u00a0In a tournament full of retirements (Andy Murray being the most notable), no one expected that the 2012 Women’s champion would be among them. \u00a0The Russian seemed in perfect form in her first 2 matches, winning 6-2, 6-2 against the Spaniard Muguruza, and 6-2, 6-1 against the US player Stephens. \u00a0Errani got the news after breakfast, and was understandably surprised, before reorganizing her schedule and pre-match routine. \u00a0In the end, she arranged to spend the afternoon with family.<\/p>\n[The following is a transcription of the Errani interview on the video featured on the link below. \u00a0I didn’t translate the first video, or twitters, as they would have been originally in English, anyway. \u00a0But do watch the charming Errani in her native Italian. \u00a0This is what she said:]<\/p>\n
Errani:<\/p>\n
Yes, I’m lucky, but I have to stay calm. \u00a0It would have been great to have played a match against her [Sharapova] today. \u00a0I don’t understand exactly why she couldn’t play, but for me the tournament goes on. \u00a0I have to stay concentrated, calm, to be ready for tomorrow. \u00a0It’s not bad to have a day off to get back to a little bit of form.<\/p>\n
Yes, the ranking matters, the #5 is a big accomplishment for me. \u00a0In terms of being “in form,” the “form” changes from one day to the next. \u00a0One day you can be in excellent shape, and two days later you might feel not so great, so it’s not like “form” lasts so much time, at a clip.<\/p>\n
I’m happy because this year I’ve been consistent. \u00a0So many great matches, so many great results, so many positives for me.<\/p>\n
For sure they’re really strong players [Stosur and Azarenka].\u00a0 That goes without saying. \u00a0Stosur is so strong on clay, and Azarenka is strong everywhere. \u00a0So we’ll see who I play against. \u00a0I’ll talk with my team when I know who the opponent is. \u00a0[Translator’s note: \u00a0The opponent will be Azarenka.]<\/p>\n
[Re: memories] \u00a0I came here [Rome] as a little girl and I wanted to ask the players for their autographs, but I was too shy. \u00a0I remember getting close to some of the players, but I never had the nerve to ask.<\/p>\n
I remember [Vince] Spadea, actually, because he was one of the ones I managed to ask. \u00a0(Laughter.) \u00a0One of the strongest memories; that one stays with me because I finally had the nerve to ask for an autograph. \u00a0I don’t remember any others. I don’t remember. \u00a0I had a poster of Mary Pierce (that I dragged around.)<\/p>\n
Maybe one of my biggest memories is when I played Hingis after the qualifiers on Campo Centrale. \u00a0I lost 6-1, 6-0, but that was one of my clearest early memories at the Foro Italico.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[divider] Translated from:\u00a0“Tennis, Internazionali Roma: Sharapova si ritira, Errani in semifinale con Azarenka” (Gazzetta.it, May 17, 2013) Discuss this and more with fellow tennis fans in our community forums. [divider] Masha is out of the Rome Open with physical issues; Sara will face the Bielo-Russian. \u00a0 Serena overwhelming. _____ Maria Sharapova retired out of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":858,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[130,129,61,131,126,779,113],"class_list":["post-855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis-international-access","tag-internazionali-bnl-ditalia","tag-italian-open","tag-maria-sharapova","tag-rome","tag-sara-errani","tag-tennis","tag-wta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}