The No.6 seed Karolina Pliskova started her quest for the title at this year’s Roland Garros with an up-and-down 7-6(6), 6-4, win against qualifier Barbora Krejcikova.
The Czech player, who at the beginning of this tournament was in the group of six hopefuls to climb to n.1 at the end of the tournament but has now dropped out of contention following Wozniacki’s first round win, recorded almost twice as many unforced errors as winners (32 to 17) , and had to come back from a 1-4 deficit in the second set after clinching a very tight, 60-minute first set by 8 points to 6 in the tie-break.
“The conditions were not great for me today – said Pliskova after her win – From the beginning of the match I felt, like, kind of slow. And like I said, the conditions pretty humid and I felt like the water is in the air”.
Playing with a typical baseline pressure tennis and relying on good powerful groundstrokes, Krejcikova was able to exploit Pliskova’s limited mobility to maintain control of the rallies and, especially during her service game, was able to avoid Karolina’s lethal forehand punch by alternating low backhand slices and ending the point with some very effective drop shots.
After trading breaks in the early games of the match, Krejcikova managed to serve for the set at 6-5, but a couple of powerful forehands by Pliskova sent the first set to a tie-breaker. Krejcikova also managed to take an early 2-0 lead but ended up at the losing end of the set, even after Pliskova squandered the first set point at 6-5 with a dreadful double fault.
The fate of the match became more and more hinged to Pliskova’s shots, even as she was broken in the second game and found herself trailing 1-4 among unforced errors and shaky second serves. But the Top 10 player managed to tidy up her game and place a 5-games-in-a-row streak to end the match after 1 hour and 37 minutes to advance to Round 2.
“I tried to step up a little bit in the court and play a little bit more aggressive, which paid off.” Commented Pliskova after the match. “I played a little bit better in the end of the second set. But overall, not the best match, for sure”.
Pliskova is in a very crowded section of the draw where she is on a collision course with n.28 seed 2-time champion Maria Sharapova in Round 3, with a possible clash in Round 4 with Serena Williams, who will face Karolina’s twin-sister Krystina Pliskova in her opening match on Wednesday. “I know I’m going to have Lucie [Safarova] in the second round. That’s it. Well, somebody told me from these Czech guys that there is Maria in the third one. So I know”, said Pliskova after her win, refusing to look past Round 3 and past Sharapova.
Obviously there had to be a question about her meltdown in Rome, where she lost her usual self control and repeatedly smashed her racquet against the umpire’s chair at the end of her match with Maria Sakkari, receiving a “four digit fine” for what she did. “I thought I’m not going to have to talk anymore about Rome – said Karolina smiling – I think everybody was kind of surprised what I did, but I don’t know. I don’t think it was that bad, but I just felt this way after that match, because I felt like it should not be this way […] But I have emotions, so I don’t know why people they think I don’t have any emotions. But it was quite positive, at least in Czech Republic, and I don’t know how much in the world. Obviously I got a fine, but it was not that big”.
