"It does feel great" - Coric after winning opening Roland Garros match

Borna Coric missed a lot of time with a shoulder injury that simply would not heal properly and now back to playing tennis, the Croatian is counting his blessings.

A shoulder injury that was supposed to leave him off the courts for about three and four months turned into a year-long absence for the Croatian. He started playing only recently and a first-round win at Roland Garros was very important to him. He was asked about the shoulder and he said:

“My shoulder and my surgery, it was a really crazy story. I still don't know what happened. I mean, I do know, but maybe not exactly, and why the doctor said I'm going to be ready pretty much after four months and after three and a half months I was still not playing tennis, not even close, actually.”

On the win, Coric added:

“Absolutely it does feel great. I also didn't know what to expect in terms of my shoulder because I've never been in the fourth set, in [best-of-five], since one and a half years now. So it was also kind of worrying for me, I didn't know how I'm going to feel, how my whole body is going to behave in those later sets. Obviously I've been practising it, but it's really never the same.”

On his tennis, Coric said:

“I think already the focus did change a little bit back to the tennis, which is obviously very good, very important, but at the same time, you know, with my shoulder, with my injury, I can never just say, ‘Okay, that's good, I don't need to think about my shoulder.’ I need to do every day what I need to do for my shoulder and then it's going to be fine. If I don't do it, most likely it won't be fine, so, you know, it's just managing those two things.”