(Translation from Diario El Mundo (05/05/2003))

        In just a month, Magüi Serna has given a significant step towards the succession. The term is compulsory in the Spanish women's tennis after Arantxa Sánchez' retirement last year and next retirement of Conchita Martínez. The Canarian player (Las Palmas, 1st March 1979) has won two titles in a row: Estoril and Budapest, and she also won her two singles matches in the Fed Cup tie against Australia. Last Friday she lost to Jelena Dokic, in the quarters in Warsaw, first defeat since Miami, in the third week of March.

She is the number 40 in the world and wants to be top 20 at the end of the season. Not only her game is more competitive each day, but she has a good conduct model. “I'm Canarian and Spanish, and I pay my taxes here”, she says on telephone from Warsaw when asked a question that many of her partners don't want to answer.

Question.- Two titles in 15 days and a win streak of 14 matches. Is that by chance or are we in front of a player with late 'outburst'?

Answer.- I would talk more of maturity. I play with more calmness and I feel less pressure than before. I also enjoy myself more and I feel more satisfaction after a match, and it doesn't depend on whether I have won or lost, I left the court satisfied. I work really well with Fernando García Lleó and Joaquín Sanchis, we enjoy the trainings very much.

Q.- Do you consider yourself the new leader of the Spanish tennis?

A.- I think I can be it. Since I started, they have talked about me as the rely of ... Arantxa or Conchita, something that doesn't offend me, on the contrary, that's a privilege. They did a lot and I think it's part of my task to keep the Spanish tennis on the top.

Q.- What makes you different of them?

A.- Tennis has developed really fast. There's more competitiveness than earlier. Now it isn't that weird that a top ten can lose to the number 90. Everyone is really prepared. What differences with me?. To start, they have many more titles than me.

Q.- You're playing tournaments of a second level to improve the ranking...

A.-Well, now I'm going to play in Berlin and Rome and later, obviously in Roland Garros.

Q.- Although your three WTA titles have been on clay, you have always been considered good on fast surfaces. You reached the quarters in Wimbledon three years ago.

Q.- I'm weird among the Spanish players. I have a good serve, I like going to the net and feel good on grass. I can be considered quite atypical.

Q.- Is it difficult for you to be fit?

A.- A little bit, but each time you know better what you have to do.

Q.- Your forbidden meal...

A.- It depends, sometimes I feel more 'sweet lover', in other moments I prefer another kind of meal.

Q.- The women play worse than the men and stay less time on court, so they should earn less money.

A.- You can see more women's tennis on TV nowadays. The statistics show that. We also have to work a lot.

Q.- Yes, but basically the women's tennis works as a sexual call.

A.- Well, I think that phenomenons as Anna Kournikova benefit us, they make that people are closer to tennis although they know nothing about this sport.

Q.- How do you get on with her?

A.- I don't know her much, but she is more or less like on TV, she has clear that people are on court to see her.

Q.- Women's tennis has less interest since Serena Williams wins everything.

A.- I wouldn't say that. Each year there are new people in the top ten, and earlier the same players alway dominated .

Q.- Tennis has said no word against the war.

A.- I can only say that I'm never in favour of a war.

Q.- You live apart from the social reality. Do you pay your taxes in Spain?

A.- I'm Canarian and Spanish, I pay my taxes in Spain and I have never thought of having my fiscal residence in another place.

Q.- Let's go back to tennis. Can Serena envy anything of you?

A.- Uf!. Maybe my serve, although she has a good serve. I would say my volley.

Q.- Where's your top?

A.- I can beat anyone in a particular moment. And, why not?, if things go well I think that I can win a Grand Slam. A tournament of this characteristics depends a lot on your draw, you can be lucky and can avoid some players.

THEY SAY ABOUT HER...

*She came back to Las Palmas a year and a half ago after spending nine years in Barcelona, because she felt very lonely.

*She lost six kilos in the preseason thanks to the work of her physical coach, Joaquín Sanchis.

*With Fernando García Lleó, her coach for a year and a half, she plays with more freedom, without the corsets of the school of Emilio Sánchez.

*She also works with José Antonio López Calvet, physiologist of the University of Las Palmas.

*She is reading “La ciudad de las bestias”, by lsabel Allende.

*They have given her the CD of OT duets.

*She would lose her head for Brad Pitt.

*She is the youngest of four children (two women and two men), daughter of a builder.

*She was runner up junior in 1996 in Wimbledon and semifinalist in Roland Garros a year earlier.