What is it about Karolina Pliskova and 6-0 sets? The dreaded bagel has stalked the former world No 1 like an avenging angel this season. It is vanishingly rare to see a zero next to the name of a player of Pliskova’s pedigree. For most top players, it happens a handful of times over the course of a career – and when it does, it sticks in the memory so firmly that most can still recall the indignity years after retirement.
Were Pliskova to successfully name all the occasions on which she failed to emerge from a set with a game in 2021, it would be a feat of recollection to rank alongside those of John von Neumann, the mathematical genius who used to entertain friends by reciting randomly selected pages from the phone directory. In March, Pliskova was beaten 6-0, 6-2 by Jessica Pegula in Dubai. In April came a 6-0, 7-5 reversal against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in Madrid, while May brought the nadir, a 6-0, 6-0 defeat to Iga Swiatek in the Italian Open final. It is fair to say the 6-0 set has become the 29-year-old’s personal nemesis.
If Pliskova thought the WTA Finals would offer a sanctuary from such ignominy, she was unceremoniously disabused of the notion by Anett Kontaveit, a 6-4, 6-0 winner over the Czech in her second outing in Group Teotihuacán. That defeat left Pliskova’s hopes of reaching the last four in Guadalajara hanging by a thread. Her compatriot, Barbora Krejcikova, arrived at the party bearing scissors. Like Pliskova, Krejcikova needed a win to have any hope of progressing. It barely needs stating that she won the opening set 6-0, playing near-flawless tennis as Pliskova shot herself in the foot with a dozen unforced errors.
Krejcikova was superb, landing 85% of her first serves and gifting her opponent just three mistakes, a measure of how well she has adjusted to the conditions since her opening-day travails against Kontaveit. Yet Pliskova was a listless, error-prone, downbeat shadow of the player who opened her campaign in Guadalajara with a dramatic three-set win over Garbiñe Muguruza.
“It’s a difficult situation, of course,” said Pliskova, who was bidding for a fourth consecutive semi-final berth at the WTA Finals. “You never want to start a match like this, with my serve and with my game, not to be able to make a game. I think it was a combination of her playing well, me not playing that well.
“But you just go back to really trying to make the simple things. With the serve, maybe just to go for the serve which you feel the most confident about. Just to play simple, maybe a couple of cross-courts, not to go for crazy winners. I think there is not the situation if you’re down 6-0 that crazy winners will just come out of nowhere. So I just fought hard to give myself a chance, at least to wait. Maybe she’s going to miss a couple, because she didn’t really miss anything in the first set.”
And that’s the fascination of Pliskova. For all that she sometimes seems to amble about like a casual observer at a car crash of her own making, she is never as disengaged as she looks. It is a mistake merely to focus on her setbacks, however spectacular they may be, without also considering how she responds to them. Any player can lose a tennis match 6-0, 6-0; it takes a special player to bounce back from such a reversal by reaching a Wimbledon final, as Pliskova did less than two months after losing to Swiatek in Rome. The mental strength required to effect such a turnaround is immeasurably greater than whatever weakness may necessitate it. The fact is that Pliskova has a healthy attitude to the game, one born of experience, of an appreciation that losing is as much a part of the sport as winning. Why should she beat herself up after a bad loss? After all, as Pliskova says, “There’s always another match.” And, in this case, even another set or two.
Having returned from a lengthy bathroom break, Pliskova sealed her first game of the match – and indeed her first in 15 attempts, having also lost the last eight against Kontaveit – with an ace. If she hoped it would be the start of a spectacular turnaround, she was quickly disabused of the notion. Krejcikova romped into a 4-2 lead, and it took all Pliskova’s powers of escapology to avoid falling behind by a second break, the Wimbledon finalist saving a break point with a crunching forehand as she survived an 11-minute game to hold for 4-3.
The effort proved worthwhile. A nervy-looking Krejcikova hit three double faults in the next game, gifting Pliskova a break, and when she subsequently missed a backhand volley that would have given her two break points for a 5-4 lead, the alarm bells were ringing for the younger woman. Krejcikova’s woes continued as she served to stay in the set, two more double faults handing Pliskova parity. Her chances of qualifying for the semi-finals now reliant on a combination of results and mathematics, Krejcikova continued to battle in the decider, forcing Pliskova to stave off break points in the fifth and ninth games. Having boldly battled her way to 5-4 despite a spate of double faults of her own, a fired-up Pliskova was not to be denied, capitalising on another flurry of errors from Krejcikova to keep her qualification hopes alive.
“In the second, that game where she gave me three double-faults, of course that kind of helped me to come back,” said Pliskova. “On the other hand, I think it was just because I was constantly putting pressure, just getting better with every game I played. I thought till this moment she didn’t really miss much. Of course, it’s tough to play a perfect match.”
The irony was that none of it really mattered in the end. Muguruza, who needed a victory against group winner Kontaveit to progress to the semi-finals at Pliskova’s expense, got just that, breaking the Estonian’s 12-match winning streak with a 6-4, 6-4 victory. Muguruza, who broke early in both sets and held serve throughout, will face Paula Badosa in the last four as two Spaniards reached that stage for the first time in the event’s history.
“It’s amazing% there are four players left and two of them are Spaniards,” said Muguruza, who is though to the semi-finals for the first time since her tournament debut in 2015. “I mean, that just shows that Spain has a great level of tennis and a great school.
“It is very special for me. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me to play the finals here. I’m extremely motivated.”