Tennis: I need to be selfish to improve my ranking, says Slovakia's Cibulkova

Dubai - The world number five says it's not possible to play every Fed Cup tie in a year packed with tournaments.

After having played for her country for 12 long years in the Fed Cup, Slovakian Dominika Cibulkova believes she has to be a bit selfish now in order to improve her WTA ranking.
The world number five, who reached the semifinals in her last two tournaments before heading to Dubai, says it's not possible to play every Fed Cup tie in a year packed with tournaments.
"It was good that I didn't play Fed Cup because I had time to prepare for Doha and that really helped me a lot and that's why I was playing well," the 2014 Australian Open runner-up told reporters on Sunday.
"I've been playing Fed Cup since I was 15 so that's more than 12 years, and it has always done wrong to my schedule," the 27-year-old player added, joining a growing list of players that have voiced concerns about the taxing schedule.
"I'm always really tired after the Fed Cup. If you decide to play Fed Cup you have to accept that you won't be ready for the next tournament. So you have to decide if you want to play for your country or not!
"I said, I'm just going to focus on my individual career and not go to Fed Cup for the whole year. I don't want to say I've already done enough but I've played every single year.
"More and more players are not playing Fed Cup. Now I'm older and more mature I see my career is not going to last forever. Right now I'm feeling I can get my best ranking and really achieve the best result so we all have to be selfish a little bit," she said.
Cibulkova is obviously delighted with the way she started the new year. "It was quite a consistent two weeks I had. Of course, I wanted to go further in both tournaments. I felt like I could win.
"But in St Petersburg it was a different story. My semifinal match wasn't good and I wasn't feeling good after that match. I was upset.
"The semifinal in Doha was a different story. I was feeling really good on court again and beat (someone) I'd never beaten before in my career so it really gave me a lot of confidence and even the match against (Karolina) Pliskova which I lost, it was a great match and I was really close to winning. So after Doha I am feeling really well."
rituraj@khaleejtimes.com