Just over a week ago, Alizé Cornet told about the imminent end of her career.

She's not quite sure yet, said the Frenchwoman, but after 17 years on the tour, there's a lot to be said for it.

"It's not an easy job.

You're basically on the road 10 months out of 12 a year, you never see your family, and it's really hard to have a love life.

And often enough, not being rewarded for your work just hurts too much.

Sometimes, for example, you lose a match point, you go back to your hotel room and you think: What is this all about?”

Everyone needs a reward now and then to stay motivated, but what about in a sport where most people lose at least as often as they win? And where, in principle, every tournament week ends with a defeat and with the associated question: Am I really good enough? Alizé Cornet won six titles in the 17 years of her career, that's almost one every three years. Passion and the ability to suffer must be damn strong in order not to drown in the rough sea of ​​disappointment. She played 63 times in her career in a Grand Slam tournament, 60 of them in a row, but she never got further than the round of 16, despite being among the top 20 in the world for many years. But in the end, the love for tennis arguably always got stronger, and that's why she's still around.

The 32-year-old Frenchwoman knows she has a reputation for being a drama queen, but she doesn't mind. "That's just how I am," she says. "I can't hide my true nature." And she allows herself a form of openness that isn't found everywhere. She was the first to react in the case of the Chinese colleague Peng Shuai, because she felt that this had to be dealt with, not at some point, but immediately. If she does retire from tennis at the end of the year, the women's tour will be missing a prominent player, but she may now reconsider the intention.

Because on a hot Monday in Melbourne something happened that she herself had hardly expected. For the first time in her career, Cornet won a fourth-round match at a Grand Slam tournament by beating Simona Halep (6-4, 3-6, 6-4) in the toughest conditions. The picture at the end spoke volumes: Halep supported herself on the net because she could hardly stand, Cornet knelt on the baseline, overwhelmed by emotions. It took a long time for her to calm down and for her to be able to think clearly. Maybe, she then said, the idea of ​​ending her career had taken a certain load off her, maybe that's why she's now achieved what she had tried in vain for all these years.

"It's never too late," she said in an interview on the pitch, "you have to keep trying." But now that she's finally going to play in the quarter-finals, for the first time she also believes that she'll go through to the end can be there. Maybe it is this very thought that makes the difference? "On verra", as the French say. We will see.

In the quarterfinals on Wednesday she will meet a player who is at least as passionate as she is, American Danielle Collins.

"She's like a lioness," says Alizé Cornet.

"I'm already intense, but she's a level above that." They're both looking forward to this game because they know there's only going to be one direction, straight and forward.

Danielle Collins played in the semi-finals in Melbourne three years ago, so she has a little more experience than the French.

But that won't matter, because Alizé smells morning air.

The kind of air that's already hot in the morning like it is in Melbourne these days.