Dubai Duty Free Tennis: Pliskova crashes out to Mladenovic, Kerber finds her game

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  • World No3 Karolina Pliskova confessed she will try to forget her defeat to Kristina Mladenovic in Dubai as soon as she can as the Doha champion saw her hopes of pulling off the Middle East double dashed on Tuesday.

    Tournament organisers must have got flashbacks from last year’s edition when three top-five seeds crashed out in one day.

    Second-seeded Pliskova suffered a 6-2, 6-4 loss to Mladenovic, third-seeded Dominika Cibulkova fell in three sets to Ekaterina Makarova, and No5 seed Garbine Muguruza retired with an Achilles injury while 1-4 down against Kateryna Bondarenko.

    Last year, the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships were hit by a slew of last-minute withdrawals before all eight seeds stumbled out of the event before the quarter-finals.

    A similar scenario looked likely on Tuesday when Pliskova, Muguruza and Cibulkova lost but top-seeded Angelique Kerber escaped the massacre as she claimed a convincing 6-4, 6-3 win over her German compatriot Mona Barthel, allowing organisers to breathe a sigh of relief.

    Pliskova, who boasts an impressive 15-2 win-loss record this season, arrived late from the Qatari capital after beating Caroline Wozniacki in the final there on Saturday and was looking to join Martina Hingis and Justine Henin as the only players to win both Doha and Dubai back-to-back in the same year.

    But the tall Czech was out of sorts and could not find her game against a focused Mladenovic, who needed to save three break points while serving for the match before she wrapped up the win to advance to the last-16.

    It was Mladenovic’s third career top-five victory, and seventh against a top-10 player.

    “I didn’t feel like my tennis at all. The conditions here are totally different compared to Doha. I just hit one day yesterday for practice,” said Pliskova, who had a bye in the first round. “Yeah, tough, and obviously she played well.

    “I didn’t play almost anything today. Few aces, and that’s it.”


    Pliskova is the only player to have won two titles already this season – in Brisbane and Doha – and she admits she can’t be too hard on herself for Tuesday’s loss.

    “I don’t want to be disappointed about this match, because I won so many matches already this year. I’m just happy about it, and this was just one bad tournament, I would say,” said the 24-year-old.

    “So there is not a lot of things to improve, and since to Indian Wells I have some time off for practicing. So excited about it. And, yeah, I’m going to forget about this one, like, really fast.”

    Mladenovic showed off her famous flair, saving one of those break points in the last game with a slick backhand drop shot and the world No31 was thrilled with her performance. She next faces Chinese world No76 Wang Qiang, who ended Tunisian Ons Jabeur’s run with a 6-3, 6-1 rout.

    “The key of the match today for me was I was very aggressive from the beginning on her serve. We know each other really well, and I was trying to put pressure on the return and be very aggressive. We could see that she double faults a couple of times from the first game,” said Mladenovic, who claimed her first WTA title in St. Petersburg earlier this month.

    “I just took advantage of her low percentage of first serve. I think I was lucky with that, that she was not totally in the rhythm with her serve.”

    Angie’s on the offensive

    Kerber came to Dubai having won just one match in all her four previous appearances in the Emirates.

    The two-time grand slam champion lost her opener to Daria Kasatkina in Doha last week and was searching for her game and consistency entering the tournament.

    She was aggressive against Barthel yesterday, dropping serve just once in each set and losing just eight points on her first serve throughout the contest.

    Kerber finished the match with a series of punishing forehands to set up a last-16 clash with Puerto Rican Monica Puig, who beat the German in the gold-medal match at the Rio Olympics last summer.

    “She played a good match, so I think that’s why I was not losing the match and I’m happy about my performance in Rio, I mean, because I still won the medal. I still have my silver medal,” Kerber says of that final in Brazil. “So this was always a dream. Doesn’t matter which one. I have the silver.

    “But at the end, she played from the beginning really one of the best matches I think she played. So that’s why, I mean, she deserved at the end the gold one.”

    American 17-year-old Cici Bellis backed up her upset over No17 seed Yulia Putintseva in the first round with another remarkable performance, this time taking out Germany’s Laura Siegemund 7-5, 7-6 (3).

    Bellis next faces fourth-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska, who eased past Belgian qualifier Elise Mertens 6-3, 6-2.

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