Alizé Lim on the “huge impact” of a Grand Slam run for lower-ranked players – French Insider excerpt

In the latest episode of The French Insider, Alizé Lim gave an insight into life on the tennis tour as she applauded the progress of Martina Trevisan and Nadia Podoroska at Roland-Garros – and pointed out just how important a string of results on the big stages can be for lower-ranked players.

“These kinds of results, for one year they can cover your expenses,” she told host Jenny Drummond. It has a huge impact and especially in the rankings as well. Usually you have to go through so many hard matches to make this amount of points. Winning one round in a Grand Slam gives you the same amount of points as winning a whole Challenger. In a way, it’s remarkable.”

‘So hard’

The Frenchwoman – whose career-high ranking is world No 134 – also revealed that sometimes the matches on the Challenger tour can be very difficult – more so than at a Slam.

“I remember playing, for example, the final of a 25K against a girl who was ranked 380 in the world. This was so hard! Such a hard match, for three hours – and the girl has never been better ranked than this. The next day, I flew to Boston, and I played a girl who was ranked 50 in the world. I won 6-2, 6-2, and it seemed so much easier. You know what I mean? Because this girl, she wasn’t in a good day. You could feel like she had another tournament the next week. So it didn’t matter as much to her as the other match meant to the other girl in the Challenger.”