Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova conceded a younger version of herself would have been bemused by why it had taken so long to reach a grand slam final after she finally did so at the French Open on Thursday.
The 29-year-old turned her first major semi-final appearance into a maiden final berth with a 7-5 6-3 victory over Tamara Zidansek in Paris.
It will be Pavlyuchenkova's first outing in a grand slam final in what is her 52nd major, which establishes an Open Era record. She has become the first woman to play more than 50 majors before reaching a final.
Asked what her 14-year-old self would have said if she had known the wait would be so long, the Russian replied: "Fourteen-year-old me would tell me, like, what took you so long?
"It's tough to really talk about it right now. I don't know. It's been a long road. I had my own long special road. Everybody has different ways. I'm just happy I'm in the final.
"This is something I've been thinking about every single time. I think as tennis players, that's the only goal I think we have in the head. That's why we are playing tennis.
"That's for us the biggest achievement you can get. That's what you are playing for, of course. I think about it all the time.
"I've been thinking about it since I was a junior, since I was a little kid, since I started playing tennis. It's been there in my head forever."
Pavlyuchenkova had six quarter-final singles losses to her name in slams before this tournament, a record that suggested a career of near-misses might be on the cards.
Curiously, she has also reached six doubles quarter-finals in the majors and also failed to win through any of those.
She now has a chance to end her long wait for a major title this weekend at Roland Garros, but admits she has had worries along the way.
"I had a lot of doubts. I could beat top-10 players and make the quarter-final of a major. I was very close to semi-finals a couple of times, but then it wouldn't happen," she said.
"It was just up and down in terms of results. But I feel like I'm there, I can beat those players, but the consistency is off, something is always off.
"Those little puzzles were not coming together every time. I guess maybe I had a lot of expectations that I couldn't deal with over the years. It's been a lot of different things."