BIRMINGHAM–
Barbora Strycova returned to the Birmingham semifinals for a fourth time in her career as she came through versus fellow-Czech Kristyna Pliskova 6-2 6-4.
In her previous two meetings against Pliskova, Strycova had not lost more than four games in a single set, and she carried that sort of form into the first set in particular. Strycova was able to break in the first game of the match, and we saw her grass-court ability from there. Not only the lovely and seamless transitions forward into the forecourt, but also her great ability to stamp her authority on the match with her groundstroke placement.
The match
The first set turned out to be extremely comfortable and one-sided. With Strycova making a consistent nuisance of herself on the return of serve. She was the first player this whole week that had success in dealing with Pliskova’s strong first serve. Once the more powerful Pliskova dropped the first service game of the match, it was already a huge mountain to climb as not only was her strongest shot being neutralised, but she doesn’t naturally possess a great return of serve, so playing catch up on the scoreboard certainly wasn’t ideal in the slightest.
The second set overall was a very different story, and it was more about Strycova being able to come through difficult moments from the service line. She saved three break points in a row at 4-3 down in the second set. She strung five points together to alleviate the pressure, then broke immediately in the following game. There were some sticky moments along the way for certain, but Strycova looked the far more comfortable when a rally got going. Overall, she was excellent at stringing enough pin-point accurate groundstrokes together to test the faulty movement of Pliskova, who does tend to struggle with her mobility on all surfaces.
Strycova also managed to clean up her baseline game in key stages, striking just nine unforced errors all match, while hitting 18 winners along the way. Pliskova wasn’t really untidy and erratic, but she did find it challenging to lift her game emotionally after the big battle against her sister Karolina. Also, she found herself continuously out-smarted by the crafty Strycova, who had a few more shots in her arsenal to bail herself out of trouble when needed.
Strycova speaks about the win
Strycova is now just the one step away from returning to the Nature Valley Classic final. She’s one of the most successful players at this event, having made the semifinal trip on four occasions. Strycova made the final in both 2014 and 2016, and her losses tend to come against very accomplished grass-court players. It always seems to taken a strong, top player to push her aside at this tournament, but she’ll be hoping that this is the year where she can go one better and earn her first title on tour since Linz in 2017. Also, despite being an accomplished and natural grass-courter, Strycova has never won a title on the grass, so maybe that is something in the back of her mind as she tries to finally achieve glory at the event in Birmingham.
“Well, I thought I started the match very well. I was playing the first set without any mistakes going on, so I broke her twice, which was the key,” Strycova said.”The beginning of the second set, I start to feel a little bit kind of — not tired, but I was heavy, because we didn’t have so much rallies so I couldn’t move so much. I was, like, I kept saying to myself, Keep moving, keep moving. The key was when it was 3-All, Love-40 on my serve and I hold it there, it was really important for me.
“Well, I had to dig in very hard. Like I say, it was 3-all, and I couldn’t put first serve in. I was, like, Why not? I was looking to my coach. He couldn’t really say, so I called him after the first set. He said, You don’t jump. So I was focusing more going first serve and volley, because it always help me. Yeah, I was just focusing point by point, because like I said, she can just hit winners and then it’s 3-6. So was just focusing to play first serve in.”
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