World No. 23 Karen Khachanov shared his assessment of his current condition prior to the Indian Wells Masters.
– What is your current state, Karen? What specific areas are you focusing on in your training, especially after having some time post-Eastern tour to train actively?
– Basically, the same as always. At the moment, I’m just trying to get in shape and play more matches.
– What do you need most right now? What is the main challenge?
– I need to play, gain match practice, and aim to win as many matches as possible consecutively. Not just one or two matches followed by a week or ten days of training before the next tournament. Ultimately, I’ve trained sufficiently since the preseason, and after Australia, I had another training block, played tournaments in Marseille, Doha, Dubai, and now we are here in America.
Again, it’s just two tournaments, and we have a month in America. It all depends on the number of games and matches I get to play. It could be quite a lot, or it could be very few, and then I’ll be training for another ten days. I’ve had enough training; now the point is to gain form and rhythm through matches and games.
– Is it also a matter of confidence? How is your confidence currently?
– I am in a good psychological state; there’s nothing that I dislike. I genuinely enjoy it; the difficult period is behind me. The results could be better, but I am looking at it positively – that I can only improve and add to my game, rather than focusing on the negatives or things not working out. Because something will always work out, and something won’t.
Perhaps my attitude towards Indian Wells has slightly changed because, after all, I played a quarterfinal here, could have beaten Nadal that year, and played well. Some years were a bit worse. I want to abstract myself, not think about the past. Maybe some conditions have changed – who knows – perhaps the balls have changed slightly, the courts. So, as they say, we’ve turned that page and are starting with a clean slate,” Khachanov said in an interview.
