Managing one’s professional tennis career is often just as tricky as figuring out which shot to play mid-rally or which serve to hit while facing a break point.

One wrong decision can have serious consequences and Magda Linette feels grateful the changes she made to her team two months ago proved to be the right move, as she stormed into the Wimbledon third round with a career-best win over No.3 seed Elina Svitolina on Thursday.

The Polish 29-year-old had to undergo knee surgery on the eve of the Australian Open, which forced her to miss the first Grand Slam of the season. When she returned to action in March, she lost five of her first six matches and felt she had to do something to turn things around.

“My bouncing back was really long,” the world No.44 Linette says with a laugh.

“Because it took me I think six, seven tournaments that I lost first round all of them were like three-setters and I couldn’t really find a way. And I ended up changing my team one week before Strasbourg.”

Linette parted ways with her coach Nick Horvat and began working with Poland’s Billie Jean King Cup captain Dawid Celt, the husband of former Wimbledon finalist Agnieszka Radwanska. She made the semi-finals in Strasbourg in their first tournament together.

“I’m just glad that the hard work I put during the rehab worked out but I also took a step back mentally to relax, regroup, just one week before Strasbourg and since then I was playing much better,” she reflects.

“I’m just happy that I made good decisions, because when you make tough decisions you never know what’s going to happen, you risk a lot and I’m just happy that those really difficult decisions after Rome, they’re just working out.”

Linette says Celt helped her utilise her footwork in the right way, which was much-needed against a grinder like Svitolina, who is a former Wimbledon semi-finalist and can outrun the very best of them on any given day.

“He gave me also some tips to change my approach a little bit, giving me freshness mentally so I relax a bit more in between practices and tournaments,” said Linette of Celt.

“But that footwork, and using my footwork during the rallies, how to shorten the time between the points, that was really big for me.”

Linette is finding her form at just the right time as she was confirmed for Poland’s Olympic squad on Thursday. Her sole previous appearance at the Games came in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 but it was a last-minute call-up and she admittedly felt unprepared, which led to a first round exit to a 13th-ranked Dominika Cibulkova.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” she said of the upcoming Tokyo Olympics.

“It’s going to be also special so I don’t know what to really expect this year. I already went to Rio and it was a last moment, I got in a couple of days before and I was not ready at all. And I went back from Montreal to China and then I had to go all the way back (to Rio).

“So this year I’m like 100 per cent there, I can approach it better, I can have my coach, my physio, I can get my team there, because five years ago I couldn’t do that.

“I’m really looking forward to it. I think it’s going to be really special, it’s going to be tough because you cannot really feel the whole thing, but it means a lot. So I’m glad, playing all the Fed Cup matches and fighting for our country all this time, now it’s really worth it.”

Her mind remains focused on Wimbledon though, where she hopes to reach the fourth round of a Grand Slam for the first time in her career. Standing in her way is Spanish No.30 seed Paula Badosa.

Linette has lost all five of her previous third round matches at the majors and looks to be sixth time lucky against the recent Roland-Garros quarter-finalist.

“I’m still so close yet so far from it,” Linette says, daydreaming of that precious spot in the second week.

“I think as the matches go it gets harder and harder. It’s so rare that I have somebody not top three or top five in the first two rounds at a Grand Slam. So it’s really tough. I think I had my chance once in Australia [in 2018] when I played [Denisa] Allertova but since then I was losing to pretty good players all the time.

“I think I need just more matches on the bigger stages where I can play my tennis like today against Svitolina and at the French, I need to prove myself a bit more. All the players that get into the second week, they always have that one great win, or two great wins and they really deserve it, so I still need to have a couple of more of those in a row to really kind of deserve it I think.”