Day 1 at the Cleveland Tennis Open ft. Podoroska and Sania Mirza

When I heard that Cleveland was hosting a professional tennis tournament (at least on the women's level that is; Cleveland Challenger takes place earlier in February), I had to be involved!

Today was our first day of talking to some of the players at the tournament. We had the chance to Nadia Podoroska of Argentina and Sania Mirza of India.

Our first question was for Ms. Mirza. As one of the most followed tennis players, male or female, we wanted to know what she thought about social media. This was her response:

"Honestly, I don't really take social media very seriously, and I think that we need to take social media with a pinch of salt. I think, um, you know, social media is great to connect with your fans and, you know, to sort of have that direct connect with them and, and do a few lives here and there. But at the end of the day, like you said, there's a lot of hidden sort of faces behind. And I feel like there is a lot of trolls, um, you know, for the lack of a better word. And I really, I don't take either of very seriously neither the, the good or the bad, like social media, doesn't really sort of like, uh, it doesn't really, um, you know, make my mood for the day or not like of what someone says on social media, good or bad.

So it's great to have that much of a fan following. It's good to have that many followers, but the pressure is something that I've dealt with since I was 15 years old, I've kind of grown up in the limelight in terms of at least being back home. I've had a lot of attention on me and it's something that I honestly like I've become very used to. You know, I've been written off multiple times and, and I've been able to come back and play some of my best tennis. So I just kind of try to focus on myself. I try to focus, on how I can play. And I mean, honestly, uh, you know, losing a tennis match is really not the worst thing that can happen to us"

For Ms. Podoroska, she accomplished one of the toughest feats in women's tennis: beating Serena Williams. We wanted to find out what she takes with her on-court and how she uses that experience to win more matches on tour.

"Congratulations, Nadia, I just wanted to ask you for someone who is being someone like Serena Williams, how do you use that victory and how do you use that experience to move forward into your game? Or how do you develop it after you have such a big win in your career?

Yeah, well, I think the not wing was really good for me. Very, very important because I saw her many times she's the legend of our sport, but, you know, it's a win a victory one day and then I have to keep working on, on my game. Of course, that gave me a lot of confidence that I could be such a great player

So what do you think is the biggest thing that you've been working on your game this year after going through everything with big wins like that?

Yeah, I'm working in my, I don't know if it's this war in English, like consistency. I don't know. The consistency that, that's why, I'm working on that. Like, it's, it's really important in this tour, being consistent, to keep winning every week. Not just one week."