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The Australian spent most of the last year at
home due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Miami was her first
tournament abroad since February 2020.
"My body feels great," top seed Barty told reporters on Monday
at the WTA 500 event in Charleston. "We've done a lot of work
over the preseason to make sure that my body could hold up and
withstand a lot of matches and I felt like we were able to do
that in Miami.
"It's really nice to be here now and kind of have a fresh start.
It's a fresh surface, it's a very quick shift for me, changing
surfaces ... it will be exciting. It'll be a quick transition,
but one that I look forward to."
The 2019 French Open champion, who turns 25 this month, has a
first-round bye and will open her clay-court season against
Japan's Misaki Doi.
"I find that green clay is almost a middle man between hard
courts and European red clay," said Barty. "Sometimes the green
clay is a little bit quicker. You can typically move on it like
a hard court if you wish, or you can go straight into sliding a
little bit and moving like on a traditional clay court.
"So we'll have to be patient this week and not feel like we're
rushing into trying to feel like we're playing our best
clay-court tennis straight away. It's important to let the body
adjust."
Barty has not played much on clay since 2019, barring some
practice sessions back home in Australia, but she was confident
of being ready for this year's French Open, which is scheduled
to start on May 23.
"It's always a part of the season that I look forward to. It's
challenging without a doubt, but I am very excited to get back
to Roland Garros," she said.
"I think it's going to be really exciting walking in back onto
that site for the first time since 2019."
(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai; editing by Peter
Rutherford)
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