After falling to Lucie Safarova in Stuttgart today, Germany's Mona Barthel tells reporters that she couldn’t mentally recover from a draining Fed Cup weekend. Barthel beat Bojana Jovanovski, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3, on Sunday to help Germany to a 3-2 World Group Playoff victory over visiting Serbia at the same Porsche-Arena in Stuttgart.
“I definitely didn’t play my best tennis today. The Fed Cup weekend with two three-setters was obviously physically exhausting,” Barthel said. “Emotionally too, as I was under immense pressure in my match on Sunday. After we had finally won and the tension had disappeared, I felt so totally tired mentally. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get in the right frame of mind for today’s match.”