World No. 1 Serena Williams was obviously coming into the match as a huge favorite against Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan, and she kept that role throughout the match. Although Shvedova pulled the American into some long games on her serve, there was never a feeling that she could make any real damage. Williams took an early break for 2-0, and took another break to win the first set 6-2 in 35 minutes. The second set took also 35 minutes, but Shvedova asserted more dominance on serve, so there was only one break for Serena. Despite the shoulder concerns before the start of the tournament, Williams didn’t lose more than 2 points on any of her service games today, and continued her unique streak of no service games dropped during the tournament. However this should be taken with a grain of salt, since Williams has not faced any seeded players, and wasn’t truly tested yet. This might change as Serena’s next opponent is one of the best returners on tour, 5th seed Simona Halep.
‘I can’t believe it, I’ve never served this consistently. When I serve, I just don’t think about it and do it.’ said Serena about her service game streak.
With this match, Serena Williams won 308 matches in grand slams, thus replacing Roger Federer at No. 1 ‘I don’t know who’ll end up on top, but I do hope we both keep playing’
Pliskova is probably in the best form of her life. In her past 2 tournaments, US Open and Cincinnati, she only dropped two sets, one to Venus here, and one to Muguruza. Venus didn’t have that good of a lead up, losing 2nd round in Montreal and 1st round at the Olympics.
Williams took the early break in the match for 2-0, and later had a 5-1 lead. She twice failed to serve out, at 5-2 and 5-4, but then Pliskova gave Venus a 0:40 lead, which was too attractive to pass. Williams got an early lead in the second set as well, this time 3-1. She couldn’t keep it for long, as Pliskova kept gaining momentum with a quick re-break and just kept going, winning the set 6-4.
Pliskova did take the lead of 3-1 in the deciding set, but had to fight break points in every other game. Williams finally broke back to 4-4 and set up the match for an exciting conclusion. First match point came for Williams at 4-5 on Pliskova’s serve, but the Czech player saved the match point and the match went on. Pliskova then got her hands on 3 match points at serve, but with the crowd roaring Venus saved all 3, won the game, and headed the match to a tiebreak. In the tiebreak, Williams put out some very aggressive, low percentage shots, which in the end cost her the tiebreak. Pliskova served well, put balls back, and that was enough for her to win the tiebreak 7-3 after 2 hours and 26 minutes.
When Pliskova was asked, how does she deal with the crowd of 23,000 people cheering against her she replied: “At least I had my serve. So at least something was on my side. I played pretty good point. I was just thinking, I have to go, I have to put everything into this point. And, yeah, I made it.”
The Czech was also asked about improvements in her game: “I think I improved my return a lot. So I’m trying to going into every second serve. But with her it’s tough because she’s having such a good serve, even the first one, even the second. So sometimes it’s tough. But I’m trying to go and be the one who is dictating the rally first.”
These were the thoughts of Venus Williams, this time, on the losing side: “We both competed really well. Of course I’d like to come out on top of that match. Just kept fighting till the end, but I don’t know, she had a little more luck today. I had a few too many errors in the tiebreaker.”
