Belinda Bencic, who has reached the semifinals of Toronto, admitted that she gets angry when she isn’t playing the way she wants.
“I am a very emotional person," said Bencic, who is currently ranked No. 20. “I feel like it helps. In my junior times and beginning of the tour I was way worse. So I try to be more calm and the matches before—just today it happened also a little bit. But I think it helps me a lot, to get pumped for the match, but also it's not good always. I mean something in between would be nice."
The Swiss was taught to play by Melanie Molitor, who is the mother of former world No. 1 Martina Hingis. The 18-year-old Bencic can be inconsistent—she won Eastbourne in July, defeating Caroline Wozniacki and Agnieszka Radwanska, but then she fell against Victoria Azarenka in the fourth round of Wimbledon. Last week, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova upset her in the second round in Washington.
In Toronto, she beat Eugenie Bouchard in three sets, bested Wozniacki in straight sets, and then she faced match points against Sabine Lisicki, but advanced in three sets. Then she stepped up in the quarterfinals to defeat Ana Ivanovic,
Bencic frequently works with Hingis, and Wozniacki said she sees her having some of Hingis' variety. “She's different from most of the other young ones coming up,” Wozniacki said. “She takes the ball early. She places the ball. She doesn't have the biggest power, but she thinks out there, and I think that's her biggest strength."