It has been a season of reinvention for Anett Kontaveit. In August, when a new coaching partnership with Dmitry Tursunov began with defeat to Ons Jabeur in Cincinnati, the Estonian was adrift. Five successive losses had thrown Kontaveit’s ranking into reverse gear, a stark reality check for a player with dreams of cracking the top 10, and her year seemed to be petering out.
Three months on, Kontaveit is the woman of the moment. Riding high at a career-best ranking of eighth in the world after an extraordinary sequence of 26 wins from 28 matches, a run that has earned her four titles and a maiden berth at the WTA Finals, the 25-year-old is suddenly the player to beat. It has been quite the transformation.
In her opening match in Guadalajara, Kontaveit staged another unexpected act of metamorphosis, the aggressive baseliner turning servebot to secure a 6-3, 6-4 victory against Barbora Krejcikova, the French Open champion, and seize the early advantage in Teotihuacán Group.
While both players struggled at times to bring the ball under their spell in a city that sits 1,500 metres above sea level, Kontaveit was the quicker to adapt to the high-altitude conditions, firing down eight aces and winning 85% of her first-service points. That stat is not quite as remarkable as it may look at first glance – with the ball flying wildly, Kontaveit found the court with less than half of her first deliveries – but she backed it up with a healthy 62% success rate behind the second ball, and did not face a break point throughout. Combined with a measured but confident display from the baseline, it was too much for Krejcikova to handle.
“I think I managed to do a good job,” said Kontaveit after claiming her fifth top-10 win of the season. “The tennis is pretty fast here, so it was important to make a first serve. I wish I made a lot more first serves. But once it did go in, I managed to win a lot of points, which was very important I think.
“Throughout my career, I’ve been in sort of the top 30 for a lot of years now. During the summer I was on a bit of a losing streak, then I started working with Dmitry and was really hoping to get a few wins. I managed to win Cleveland, then it just sort of started rolling from there.
“I’ve been believing in myself a little bit more, and the game definitely has clicked from just getting more wins and playing a lot of tennis and really feeling comfortable.”
That much was evident. Krejcikova, who in the absence of Ashleigh Barty, Naomi Osaka and Emma Raducanu is the only reigning grand slam champion in the field, has shown herself to be a master locksmith this season, but the Czech struggled to find her usual control and consistency in the thin Mexican air. Although she was broken only twice, Krejcikova made 34 unforced errors in all, repeatedly sending her returns long and further undermining her cause with some untimely double faults. The good news for the world No 3, who is also playing the doubles in Guadalajara alongside her compatriot Katerina Siniakova, is that she will have plenty of matches to work out how best to acclimatise.
“The conditions were tricky,” said Krejcikova. “It was my first match, so obviously I was hoping it would go better. It wasn’t that good. I still have a lot of matches to go. It was only two breaks, one in the first, one in the second. I hope I’m going to improve [in dealing] with the conditions. It’s just difficult, because a couple of days ago I was playing in Europe, now I’m here. It’s really, really, really difficult.”
In the evening session, Karolina Pliskova shaded a topsy-turvy battle between the only two players in Guadalajara who have contested the event previously, defeating Garbiñe Muguruza 4-6, 6-2, 7-6 (8-6) to extend her dominant record over the Spaniard. Having broken at the first time of asking, Pliskova dropped serve twice in quick succession as Muguruza seized control of the first set against a player she had beaten just twice in their previous 10 meetings. It was, said Pliskova afterwards, the cue to open her shoulders.
“I just went for it a bit more,” said the Czech, who conceded just two points on serve in the second set. “I thought I was a bit too passive in the first set and still making mistakes. I said, ‘Okay, just go for it a bit more. If I’m still making mistakes, at least I will have some winners.’ Especially the second serve, I wanted to really put pressure on it. It paid off.”
As the clock ticked past the two-hour mark, Pliskova fashioned her first match point, blasting an off-backhand return past Muguruza as she served to stay in the contest at 4-5. The Spaniard staved off the danger with a big first serve down the centre, and survived a second match point when Pliskova nudged a two-hander into the bottom of the net. Now it was the Czech’s turn to be tested, Pliskova finding two first serves when she most needed them to recover from 15-40 down in the next game.
Pliskova faced another sticky moment with Muguruza serving at 5-4 in the climactic tiebreak, but some errant hitting off the forehand proved costly for the former French Open and Wimbledon champion, who gifted Pliskova a third match point. This time it was the Czech who went long, but at 7-6 she sealed the victory as Muguruza sent a forehand wide behind her serve.
“Man, that was a painful loss, definitely,” said Muguruza. “It’s not easy to play here. I actually felt good. I fought as hard as I could. At the end, it was just one point difference. I’m proud of the match I played, due to the circumstances. I loved the crowd. Even though I suffered during this match, I also felt very energised and motivated to play in Mexico.”