The match between Karolina Pliskova and Aryna Sabalenka on Thursday was the first women’s singles semi-final at Wimbledon to go to the deciding set in six years. The last time a third set was played at this stage was back in 2015 when Garbine Muguruza beat Agnieszka Radwanska.
But unlike that match, this time, the player who dropped the first set won the match. Indeed, this was just the third instance in the last 34 Grand Slam semi-finals that the woman who won the first set didn’t win the match. Pliskova fought back from a tight, last-gasp loss of the first set to win 5-7, 6-4, 6-4, minutes short of the two-hour mark.
This alone indicates that the clash between two of the more consistent top-20 players on the WTA tour was a high-intensity encounter. Pliskova, a former world No 1 who reached her first Grand Slam final in 2016, and Sabalenka, the second seed in her first semi-final, put up an engrossing contest of high-octane serves and powerful groundstrokes. There was little to separate them, statistically and stylistically, so little that the loser ended up having the better numbers in the end.
Sabalenka had more winners (38 to 32), more aces (18 to 14) and more success at the net than Pliskova. Usually, when the big-hitting Belarusian has a positive differential like this across a match, she ends up winning it.
But here Pliskova had the one metric that mattered the most in the end: just one break point on serve to her opponent’s 10, two of which were converted in the last two sets. The eighth-seeded Czech has one of the strongest serves in the game and she deployed it to full effect. As solid as her serve was, Pliskova won the match in two areas: a visibly better return game and the intangible element of experience.
It has been nearly five years since Pliskova reached her Major final before this, the 2016 US Open, and two years since she reached a semi-final, the 2019 Australian Open. She lost both. In fact, Pliskova has lost almost every match at the business end of a Major where she was favoured to win. The former world No 1 did not get past the fourth round since 2019 and last week, for the first time in almost five years she fell out of the WTA Top 10.
“The dream was to make the second week because I hadn’t done that for a while. I never thought about maybe going into the final,” she admitted after.
And yet, this flying under the radar seemed to be the key as she hit her stride on grass, not dropping a single set en route to the semi-final. And yet, when she did drop a set, it actually helped her get better.
Solving the problem
The 29-year-old constantly dug in on Sabalenka’s serves in the first set but failed to convert even one of her eight breakpoints. On the other hand, when she finally gave up a breakpoint of her own – the only one of the match – it was a set point. In what would turn out to be her only gaffe in the semi-final, Pliskova committed a double fault and lost the first set.
Normally, this would be the lowest of points. Imagine squandering eight breakpoints and being broken in the final game after a double fault. Sabalenka had in fact won their two previous encounters in the third set.
But this version of Pliskova made it a turning point and when she got her ninth chance, she broke to love and moved ahead. All through the second set, she played a mix of strong and sparkling tennis at a level that the very good Sabalenka couldn’t reach. The 29-year-old was sprinting all over, making difficult shots and using wily angles to put her younger rival out of the points.
Julia Goerges, former WTA player and Wimbledon semi-finalist, analysed the strategy saying that Pliskova was taking pace off her serve to disrupt Sabalenka’s rhythm.
The Belarusian’s game is built around her raw power and once she gets settled, it’s hard to out-hit her. The winners-to-errors ratio tells you that she was not making her usual mistakes either. But the experienced Pliskova kept her serve steady and returns strategic. It worked like a charm as she got the early break in the third set too and then served it out, fittingly with an ace on match point.
Pliskova, who was such an underdog that this was her first match on the Centre Court this Wimbledon, finally made her long-awaited return to a Grand Slam final at a time when no one expected her to.
Given her big-serving game seems built for grass, she was highly billed ahead of the last two Wimbledon Championships but she had never made it past the fourth round. This time, with a Grand Slam-winning coach in Sascha Bajin (the former coach of Naomi Osaka) in her corner, Pliskova has made the jump from her first quarter-final to her first final at All England Club.
Against world No 1 Ashleigh Barty, she will face an equally, if not more, adept grass courter. If Pliskova can back her game and problem solve as she did against the second seed, she will have a real chance at a first Grand Slam title.
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