Speaker 1: Hi everyone, and welcome to the AO Show and another
Speaker 1: episode of the sit Down. I'm Vic Christi of Australian
Speaker 1: Tennis Magazine and it's great to be joined by my
Speaker 1: colleague Mattrolope of oz open dot Com. Great to be
Speaker 1: chatting tennis with you.
Speaker 2: Again, Matt.
Speaker 3: It's good to be back Viv for the second edition
Speaker 3: of the sit Down. If listeners didn't hear, last week,
Speaker 3: we debuted this new podcast stream, which features interviews and
Speaker 3: in depth chats with people in the tennis industry. We
Speaker 3: featured an interview that Nick mccavil did with Yanick Sinner
Speaker 3: during his title run at the Australian Open, which is
Speaker 3: a really good listen. I'd encourage everyone to go back
Speaker 3: and check that out. And this week we're back with
Speaker 3: another interesting guest. Who have we got on this week?
Speaker 1: Today we actually talked to Marta Kostyuk. So Marta caught
Speaker 1: up with Andrea Petkovich in January at a great time
Speaker 1: in her.
Speaker 3: Career, Absolutely a great time because she's had an incredible
Speaker 3: start to twenty twenty four and after this chat she's
Speaker 3: gone on to continue that form. Got her first top
Speaker 3: five win in San Diego. She went on to make
Speaker 3: the semi finals of Indian Wells. She's on the brink
Speaker 3: of the top twenty five. It's all kind of coming
Speaker 3: together for her. And what I loved about this chat
Speaker 3: is that she kind of goes into the weeds of
Speaker 3: what have been the ingredients behind her rise and how
Speaker 3: she's gotten to this point and how she's trending in
Speaker 3: the right direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everything is trending out for Marta, really, and let's
Speaker 1: hear what she has to say.
Speaker 2: Well, don Marta into the quarterfinals for the first time,
Speaker 2: and what a performance it was. I saw a lot
Speaker 2: of variety. You want, twenty one out of twenty nine
Speaker 2: points at the net? Yes, not that at all. Are
Speaker 2: those the things you worked on in the off season?
Speaker 2: What are the things you implemented to get to your
Speaker 2: quarterfinals for the first time at a Grand Slam tournament.
Speaker 4: I don't think there is anything specific that we worked on,
Speaker 4: you know, like, Okay, let's work on this specific shot.
Speaker 4: But I think it was just more the you know,
Speaker 4: I used to have like very chaotic game. You know,
Speaker 4: I could do a lot of things, but they were
Speaker 4: never really in the proper order. So I think we've
Speaker 4: been working more more like having how do I say, it's.
Speaker 2: More structure, Yeah, more.
Speaker 4: Structure, yeah in my game, So yeah, it's you know,
Speaker 4: it makes me feel more I forgot English. Sorry, it
Speaker 4: makes a.
Speaker 2: Big day for the first time.
Speaker 4: It makes me feel more like confident on the court,
Speaker 4: you know, like on important points. I know that I
Speaker 4: will not just decide something that I've never done in
Speaker 4: my life. So yeah, I think this is the main work. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Nice, And you are a very expressive player. I love that.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I have to know the score. I
Speaker 2: take a look at you, and I know whether it's
Speaker 2: going well or whether it's not going well. How do
Speaker 2: you channel these emotions that you have to play your
Speaker 2: best tennis?
Speaker 4: Well, I don't like to be very expressive, you know,
Speaker 4: but there are just you know, sometimes I'm better, but
Speaker 4: sometimes it's really I wish it would be better. I
Speaker 4: don't know. I think, like naturally, I'm very emotional person
Speaker 4: and very open and open minded, and it's not always easy,
Speaker 4: you know, to be calm and how do they say it,
Speaker 4: like very stable and like you also, yeah, I just
Speaker 4: I try to accept myself, you know, because I don't
Speaker 4: think at certain point it just doesn't make sense to
Speaker 4: fight yourself, you know, because there are just emotions that
Speaker 4: are going through my head or through me that I
Speaker 4: just cannot not express, cannot hide. And yeah, I think
Speaker 4: I've been spending a lot of energy at times fighting
Speaker 4: myself being the way I'm not. And yeah, of course
Speaker 4: I still have to always look for this balance that
Speaker 4: is not too much. That it doesn't you know, change
Speaker 4: my game, that it doesn't.
Speaker 2: How do I say it.
Speaker 3: That it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that it doesn't you know, make me play worse
Speaker 4: in a way. So, but you know we're getting there slowly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean to the quarterfinals. Now I'm not sure,
Speaker 2: but maybe you got married? Yeah I did? Then, yes,
Speaker 2: there it is, show it off and then you reached
Speaker 2: the quarterfinals. Should you have gotten married before that? No, No,
Speaker 2: it does.
Speaker 4: Honestly. It's like I don't feel like it's too early,
Speaker 4: but you know, I'm very young, and at times I'm like, whoa,
Speaker 4: I'm only twenty one. If if we were married for
Speaker 4: ten years, I will be only thirty one, you know.
Speaker 2: So it's like.
Speaker 4: It was a very good decision. You know, I'm very happy,
Speaker 4: but you know, I don't think I would want to
Speaker 4: do it efore. Yeah, even earlier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I hope if anybody has time to check
Speaker 2: on Instagram, there are beautiful photos of you to congratulations.
Speaker 2: Another thing I came across your Instagram is I saw
Speaker 2: you on a surfboard and you had an amazing comment.
Speaker 2: You said, at least she died doing what she loves.
Speaker 2: Did you get, of course Australia's beautiful beaches. Did you
Speaker 2: have time to do some surfing here in Australia or
Speaker 2: were you too busy winning.
Speaker 4: I didn't do any surfing in Australia and I don't
Speaker 4: think I will because I'm very scared of the oceans
Speaker 4: of the water. Yeah. So when we were in surfing
Speaker 4: in La, there were sting rays. So my husband saw
Speaker 4: a sting ray and we flew off like from the water.
Speaker 4: But then we came back because we were like, oh,
Speaker 4: we will die, but at least we will die doing
Speaker 4: what we love. And then I tried surfing in Maldives.
Speaker 4: We were we had our honeymoon there and I almost died,
Speaker 4: but really I almost died. Yeah, I the waves were
Speaker 4: bigger than we thought. They were probably like five times
Speaker 4: bigger than in La, and we just, you know, we
Speaker 4: just because it was our second time we were too
Speaker 4: sure of ourselves, you know. And in Maldives there are rocks,
Speaker 4: so where the wave breaks in the rocks and I
Speaker 4: couldn't get out of it. So I was hit by
Speaker 4: a wave twice, like I was right in this curve
Speaker 4: and yeah, I was out of breath. So I almost died.
Speaker 4: So then the next day we went surfing again, of course,
Speaker 4: and I tried again and I managed to get up.
Speaker 4: But it's very I think it's it's very dangerous. So
Speaker 4: you have to pick like times and days where when
Speaker 4: you can do it. But yeah, don't think in Australia.
Speaker 4: Is a lot of sharks here, and yeah, I'm traumatized
Speaker 4: from Maldives already.
Speaker 2: So basically what you're saying, if you want to be
Speaker 2: as successful as Marta Costuok reached the quarter finals, you
Speaker 2: have to get married and then almost die. Yeah. Perfect,
Speaker 2: we'll take that. Yes, thank you very much, thank you.
Speaker 3: Thanks viv Mana Costjuoc has achieved way more in her
Speaker 3: life at age twenty one. I'm thirty seven, and I
Speaker 3: it piles into insignificant. So I just listened to her talk.
Speaker 3: She's married, she's achieving all this great stuff, she's barely
Speaker 3: out of university age in Australia. I just think her
Speaker 3: age is such a staggering element about her rise. It
Speaker 3: feels like she's been around for such a long time.
Speaker 3: And then yeah, when she says that, you're kind of like, oh, wow,
Speaker 3: you're just in your formative years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean, I'm not thirty seven. I wish
Speaker 1: I was thirty seven. I'm a little bit older than that.
Speaker 1: I wish i'd achieved half of what Marta has achieved.
Speaker 1: I mean she was only what fourteen when she won
Speaker 1: the Australian Open Girls title in twenty seventeen. So I
Speaker 1: think that's partly why we forget that she's still so young,
Speaker 1: because she did so much so early in her career.
Speaker 3: Remember that year or two when she used to win
Speaker 3: things and she would backflip because she was doing gymnastics
Speaker 3: or acrobatics. What if she was doing she'd celebrate like
Speaker 3: if titles and junior titles with a backflip, and you
Speaker 3: know it'd be nicely. She brought that back.
Speaker 1: She's so much fun on court, isn't she. I mean
Speaker 1: I loved listening to her say that she used to
Speaker 1: have a very chaotic game, and you know she's trying
Speaker 1: to channel her emotions in a really positive way. And
Speaker 1: I think she's doing all of those things, but I
Speaker 1: also think those are are what makes her so fun.
Speaker 3: It struck me when she described her game as chaotic.
Speaker 3: What a great word to you use in not your
Speaker 3: native language, but also to me the layman watching her
Speaker 3: play her game didn't look chaotic like I mean, she
Speaker 3: was so talented. She had all the shots. I guess
Speaker 3: maybe at that high level though, where you're discerning and
Speaker 3: you know you need to play with patterns and the
Speaker 3: right kind of tactics and things like that, her version
Speaker 3: before she was doing that was chaotic. But she had
Speaker 3: all of the ingredients. I guess she just can't kind
Speaker 3: of put them in the right order. And that's been
Speaker 3: happening a lot under her coach, Sandro Zanievska.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and she's one of the few players on
Speaker 1: tour to have a women's coach, and she's talked about
Speaker 1: how that really works for her, Like she talks about
Speaker 1: how she communicates, she understands that the way they communicate together,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it seems to be just a really great
Speaker 1: package for her.
Speaker 3: I also loved hearing her being interviewed by Andrea Pekovic.
Speaker 3: She's got a great energy. What an addition to our team.
Speaker 3: She was into the world feed of the Australian Open
Speaker 3: as she was doing on court interviews, and she was
Speaker 3: in the commentary booth and I really enjoyed her insights.
Speaker 3: It must be really cool for a tennis player to
Speaker 3: get interviewed by another pro that understands them. I think
Speaker 3: she helped bring out a lot in costure in that chat.
Speaker 1: I think she really brought out the fun in her
Speaker 1: I loved Andrea's really cheeky question about marriage and she
Speaker 1: should should she have got married earlier?
Speaker 3: I thought that was so much fun and showed up.
Speaker 3: I'm assuming that was a reference to The Ring.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And yeah I hope that everyone did
Speaker 1: check out the Instagram photos because of her wedding because
Speaker 1: they are stunning and she you know, she had her
Speaker 1: dress designed by Wilson.
Speaker 3: And a Cypress location. I think, yeah, my.
Speaker 1: Gosh, what a few months that she's had.
Speaker 3: Yeah, unbelievable.
Speaker 1: We'll be back next week with another episode of the
Speaker 1: sit Down. In the meantime, John on the Team return
Speaker 1: on Thursday with the AO Show Weekly.
Speaker 3: You can find all the details for how to contact
Speaker 3: us in the show notes below, and as always, please subscribe,
Speaker 3: rate and review. See you next week to do it
Speaker 3: all again.