Monterrey: Pavlyuchenkova Profile
Three-time Abierto Monterrey Afirme champion Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova discusses her unlikely journey from bashing balls on the banks of the Volga to the top of the women’s game.
Three-time Abierto Monterrey Afirme champion Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova discusses her unlikely journey from bashing balls on the banks of the Volga to the top of the women’s game.
INDIAN WELLS, CA, USA – Serena Williams wrapped up the top half second round action at the BNP Paribas Open with a straightforward win over German qualifier Laura Siegemund, 6-2, 6-1.
Watch highlights, interviews and more video from Indian Wells right here on wtatennis.com!
Playing in her first match since reaching the final at the Australian Open and in the chilly nighttime conditions in Indian Wells, Williams found herself facing a break point right away in the first game of the match. Siegemund’s variety and a sneaky drop shot tripped her up, but the World No.1 shook off any lingering rust with ease to fend off the early assault.
From then on the match grew increasingly one-sided, with Williams simply outgunning the German qualifier, taking the ball early and attacking from every side of the court. A beautiful backhand down the line brought up set point for the top seed, which she took with one her signature swing volleys.
Siegemund continued to attack and even brought up another chance to break in the first game of the second set, but Williams roared back from 0-40 to brush it aside. Not taking the opportunity ended up being costly for Siegemund, and Williams won five straight games to wrap up the encounter in barely over an hour.
“My intensity was the key,” Williams said in her post-match interview. “[Siegemund] actually started out really strong in that first game when I was serving, she was close to breaking me.
“I knew right then and there if I wasn’t going to come out at 100% it would be a long match.”
Awaiting Williams in the third round is Yaroslava Putintseva, who earlier in the day knocked out the No.27 seed Kristina Mladenovic 6-4, 6-4.
The crowd loves @SerenaWilliams! ? ? https://t.co/g0y73sWbBh
— WTA (@WTA) March 12, 2016
INDIAN WELLS, CA, USA – Upsets reigned supreme in the top half of the draw on Friday at Indian Wells, with seeds going only 7-9. Will the chaos continue on Sunday? We preview today’s third-round matchups here.
Sunday, Third Round
[1] Serena Williams (USA # 1) vs. Yulia Putintseva (KAZ # 56)
Head-to-head: Williams leads 1-0
Key Stat: Williams will bid for her 20th career win at Indian Wells against just one loss.
After her second-round victory over Laura Siegemund of Germany, Williams admitted that she’s a lot less nervous than she was last year, when she ended her boycott and played in the desert for the first time since 2001. “I was really kind of stressed out last year,” Williams told reporters. “It was a lot of emotions last year. This year it was a lot easier. I mean, obviously there is still something there, but it’s a lot easier to just deal with everything.” A more relaxed Williams could spell big trouble for Yulia Putintseva, but don’t expect the 21-year-old to lay down and play dead. She’s as fiery as they come and she’ll come out ready to take her shots at the World No.1.
Pick: Williams in two
[3] Agnieszka Radwanska (POL #3) vs. [32] Monica Niculescu (ROU # 34)
Head-to-head: Radwanska leads, 2-1
Key Stat: Radwanska has reached the semis in all three events she has played in 2016.
Radwanska saved a match point in making a valiant comeback to dispatch Dominika Cibulkova on Friday. Next up, she’ll face a fellow slice-and-dicer in the quirky Monica Niculescu, who took out Heather Watson to reach the third round at Indian Wells for the first time. Though Radwanska comes in as the heavy favorite, Niculescu comes in with good form, having notched wins over Petra Kvitova, Sabine Lisicki and Jelena Jankovic this season.
Pick: Radwanska in two
[5] Simona Halep (ROU #5) vs. [30] Ekaterina Makarova (RUS # 32)
Head-to-head: Halep leads 2-1
Key Stat: Defending champion Halep was the WTA’s hardcourt match win leader in 2015 (41-11).
Jazzed after an inspiring hitting session with Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf in Las Vegas last week, Simona Halep came out and blitzed Vania King to reach the third round. But the competition stiffens for the Romanian on Sunday as 30th-seeded Ekaterina Makarova steps up. Halep owns the head-to-head edge over the Russian but Makarova won their biggest match to date at the 2015 Australian Open. To be honest, neither player has played anywhere near their potential this year, but a big win on Sunday could do a lot for the confidence of either player.
Pick: Halep in three
[8] Petra Kvitova (CZE # 8) vs. Johanna Larsson (SWE # 66)
Head-to-head: Kvitova leads 2-0 (both meetings Challenger-level)
Key Stat: Kvitova has fallen against players ranked outside the Top 50 at her last two tournaments (Dubai/Brengle, Doha/Ostapenko).
Petra Kvitova narrowly avoided the upset in defeating Montenegro’s Danka Kovinic in a third-set tiebreaker on Friday, and on Sunday she’ll look win back-to-back matches for the first time in 2016. The serve is the glue that generally holds the Kvitova game together, but in her last two matches the Czech has faced 26 break points. That’s too many. Kvitova will have to take command of her service games to go deep into the tournament, but if she can tighten up her game she may be able to ride her favorable draw all the way to the semis or beyond.
Pick: Kvitova in two
[19] Jelena Jankovic (SRB #19) vs. CoCo Vandeweghe (USA # 38)
Head-to-head: Tied, 3-3
Key Stat: 2010 champion Jankovic snapped a three-match losing streak versus Vandeweghe with a straight-sets win in Sydney over the American in January.
CoCo Vandeweghe is a bit of a wild card, and she can be prone to inconsistency. But when the hard-serving 24-year-old is on, she can be a terror to face. On Sunday the American will try to get past last year’s runner-up Jelena Jankovic, but beating the Serb in the desert has always proven to be a difficult task. Jankovic owns 24 career wins here, but she’s struggled to find her form thus far in 2016, going 5-7. Meanwhile, Vandeweghe has won six of eight matches—three of which came against Top 20 opposition—since dropping her first three tilts of the season.
Pick: Vandeweghe in three
-Chris Oddo, wtatennis.com contributor
An interview with Roberta Vinci after her third round win at the BNP Paribas Open.
An interview with Victoria Azarenka after her win in the third round of the BNP Paribas Open.
Highlights from the third round action at the BNP Paribas Open.
INDIAN WELLS, CA, USA – The bottom half of the draw will take the court on Thursday to finish off the quarterfinals at the BNP Paribas Open. We preview the matchups here.
[13] Victoria Azarenka (BLR #15) vs. Magdalena Rybarikova (SVK #97)
Head-to-head: Azarenka leads, 2-0
Key Stat: Rybarikova is the lowest-ranked player to reach the quarterfinals at Indian Wells since 2012.
Victoria Azarenka continues to play the type of tennis that elicits strong conviction from pundits that she will one day return to the top of the game. Already one of the best returners, the World No.15 is developing into one of the best servers this season. The former No.1 has only faced six break points in her three matches here in the desert, and credits additional power for improvement of her serve. “I worked a lot on my serve to be able to create easier serving games and going for my shots,” Azarenka said after defeating Samantha Stosur in three sets on Tuesday, a match in which she faced only one break point. “Developing power and speed, and now I need to work a little bit more on accuracy.” Azarenka could make her return to the Top 10 with a title at Indian Wells, but down the road she’d like to achieve a lot more than that. “I think getting to No.1 of course it’s a goal. My main goal is to win Grand Slams,” she said. “That’s what I want really bad and that’s what I’m working towards.”
Meanwhile, Slovakia’s Magdalena Rybarikova is playing some of the best tennis of her career, and has notched her biggest result at a Premier Mandatory event. The 27-year-old former World No.31 has now won three consecutive matches against the Top 10, and four of her last six.
Pick: Azarenka in two
Daria Kasatkina (RUS #48) vs. [18] Karolina Pliskova (CZE #19)
Head-to-head: First meeting
Key Stat: Kasatkina already has five more main draw wins in 2016 (12) than she managed in all of 2015 (7).
Clearly, there is something about the thin desert air that 23-year-old Karolina Pliskova enjoys. She improved to 7-2 lifetime at Indian Wells with a takedown of Great Britian’s Johanna Konta on Tuesday to reach the quarterfinals here for the first time. Pliskova is tied for the tournament lead in aces and has won 87 percent of her service games over her first three matches. After dropping back-to-back first-rounders in the Middle East, Pliskova retreated to her residence in Monaco to regroup. “Last year I didn’t lose any first rounds,” Pliskova said after defeating Ana Ivanovic in the third round. “Now I’d lost twice in a row so I’m just happy to have some matches and looking forward to the next one.”
Though not widely known, Pliskova’s next opponent promises to provide her most difficult challenge of the week. 18-year-old Daria Kasatkina, the youngest player in this year’s draw, has created quite the buzz around the grounds with her sparkling game and fine mental focus. The young Russian backed up a big three-set win over Monica Puig with an eyebrow-raising straight-sets thumping of No.12 seed Timea Bacsinszky on Tuesday night. Kasatkina dealt with Bacsinszky’s eclectic strokes and world-class defense clinically, peppering the Swiss’ forehand with heavy topspin forehands of her own, patiently waiting for her opportunities to strike. On Thursday she’ll face Bacsinszky’s polar opposite in the hard-serving Pliskova and it will be interesting to see how the Indian Wells debutant handles the challenge.
Pick: Pliskova in three
– Chris Oddo, wtatennis.com contributor
– Strong semifinal slate: The BNP Paribas Open semifinals are set for Friday night: No.1 Serena Williams faces No.3 Agnieszka Radwanska, followed by No.13 seed Victoria Azarenka against No.18 seed Karolina Pliskova.
Is Serena playing better ball in 2016 than 2015? It’s a legitimate question to ask. Setting aside the blemish of losing in the Australian Open final, Serena has offered a far more consistent high-quality level to start this season. In her first big test of the tournament she handled an in-form Simona Halep in the quarterfinals, winning 6-4, 6-3. It’s been business as usual for Serena this year in the desert, with the chaos surrounding her return last year subsiding.
“I feel really good,” Serena said. “I’m hoping to be able to perform in the semifinal. I have been feeling pretty good this whole tournament so far. So I hope that I can be able to continue to feel pretty good.”
– Can Agnieszka Radwanska muster the belief? With her run to yet another semifinal, Radwanska will rise to No.2 on Monday behind Serena. That means Friday night’s match will feature the top two players in the world. But can Radwanska make a match of it?
She is 0-9 against Serena and has won just one set, which came in 2012 in the Wimbledon final. As clever a shot-maker and tactician as she is, Radwanska has yet to be able to solve her Serena riddle.
“I just hope I can really play good tennis that I was playing last few days, and that’s it,” Radwanska said. “You know, goal is to win, but it’s not gonna be easy, that’s for sure.”
Match-ups are just as determinative of results as forehands and backahands and this has been a terrible match-up for the crafty Radwanska. Her off-pace returns rarely bother the American and she has struggled to find a way to keep the ball in awkward positions on the court against Serena. And as we saw at the Australian Open, if Serena’s return game is on Radwanska will struggle mightily to hold. In the semifinals of the Australian Open, Serena raced away with a 6-0, 6-4 win.
“I think it was one of my best matches,” Serena said. “I played pretty well the whole week. I just remember being aggressive and going forward and keeping my errors down, even though in the second set she made a great effort to come back and try to push for a third set. But I was able to get back in there and close it out. So it was a good match. Even though the scoreline was one way, it was definitely a good match.”
– Can Victoria Azarenka get revenge? Flash back a year ago to the first round of the Brisbane International. Azarenka and Pliskova, then ranked No.23, slugged it out for over three hours before Pliskova saved match point and won 4-6, 7-6(7), 6-4. It was one of the small handful of “Sliding Doors” moments for Azarenka in 2015. How different would each player’s respective season have been if the result was reversed? Pliskova would eventually storm up the rankings and into the Top 10, while Azarenka continued to struggle.
“She played really well,” Azarenka said after her 6-0, 6-0 win over an injured Magdalena Rybarikova. “I think I didn’t play bad, especially after a long break coming back. It was a long match, I remember. I remember I had a lot of opportunities. Hopefully tomorrow when I create those opportunities I can convert them.”
Said Pliskova: “I saw it few times already because I thought it was a really good match. I was down match point so I almost lost this match, but in the end I won. Was a big fight and big match, and especially was the first match of the season.
“So it was a big thing for me, big win, so I will remember this one. I just hope if I play her I play the same level as I played.”
A win for Pliskova would put her into the biggest final of her career so far, while Azarenka is aiming to get back into the final of a Premier Mandatory for the first time since 2012.
– Azarenka’s confidence is building: The former No.1 has lost just one match in 2016 and tallied her second double-bagel win of the season – she’s also dished out six bagel sets this year. So does Vika have the swagger of a woman who’s had a near-flawless start to the season?
“I feel that the most important thing for me right now is feeling that I’m improving from match to match and feeling healthy that knowing that when I go out there I give myself the best opportunity to win, which wasn’t the case last two years,” Azarenka said.
“If you look at my matches last year I didn’t feel like any matches that I lost I was outplayed. In all the matches I had chances and all the matches I could have won those matches, I think. So I don’t know. I think confidence for me this year comes from being very well prepared and feeling healthy.”
– Kasatkina rising fast: The WTA Insider team has been big on Daria Kasatkina since her US Open run last fall but no one could expect the results she’s tallied over the last six months. The 18-year-old ran out of gas against Pliskova but she’ll make her Top 40 debut on Monday.
Is she surprised by her own success rate? “A little bit, yeah,” she said with a laugh. “Now I’m top 40. Last year I was 340. Yeah, it was pretty fast.”
All photos courtesy of Getty Images.
I remember a post-match interview from early 2014 that turned some heads, or at least turned mine. Eugenie Bouchard had just made her first Grand Slam semifinal at the Australian Open from a ranking of No.31, her first real major breakthrough – pun intended. When asked about her Cinderella run, here is some of what she had to say:
“I’m proud of how I’ve improved as a player throughout the tournament. But I’m never satisfied with losing. I’m always disappointed; I always want to go further and do better. I wouldn’t say I exceeded my expectations, but I’m happy with how I did.”
To me, still fresh on tour, this came off as blatant arrogance. You expect this? How could you possibly expect to reach a Grand Slam semifinal, much less actually say that in press? It had always appeared to me that, no matter how hard you work, no matter how great the coaching you receive, making a Grand Slam semifinal had to involve a little bit of luck. Surely, then, you would be humbled by the experience.
Thx Gena 4 this awesome shot from last night. &4 keeping me fit enough to get the W (@rocketrm helped 2?) #teamGibbs pic.twitter.com/HC3Ywiv2NO
— Nicole Gibbs (@Gibbsyyyy) March 9, 2016
Perhaps my bias toward the involvement of luck in success on the tennis court was imparted to me by my first coach: my father. I remember clearly when, one day, he pulled me aside during a practice in which I was shuffling around listlessly and not giving my full effort. He said, “There are tons of kids out there who work every bit as hard as you, maybe even harder, who will never achieve what you’re setting out to achieve in tennis.”
Kind of brutal, no? But the bottom line stuck with me: you can give everything you have to this game and still fall short of lofty goals like “making it” on tour.
So when Genie said that she expected results like a slam semifinal, I was confused and even a bit put off.
W 1 of my long time friends #kristenmcphillips after the match. @1kmcphillips where u at?? ❤️ this family to death ? pic.twitter.com/ZrdK5dTSL6
— Nicole Gibbs (@Gibbsyyyy) March 10, 2016
Now, fast forward to my first three months of 2016 – months that have MOST DEFINITELY NOT seen me reach a Grand Slam semifinal – but months that have included some of my best tennis and results to date. Here are some of the questions that have been cropping up, especially after my fourth round appearance this past week at the BNP Paribas Open:
Are you surprised?
What changed?
Can you keep it up?
These questions seem simple, maybe even small talk material, but they’re not.
Am I surprised? Yes, and no. I am surprised to have arrived at a place where wins that used to evade me are feeling comfortable. But I also don’t feel that I’m doing anything unsustainable.
What changed? Everything, and nothing. I’m looking at myself and my potential very differently than I was a year ago, but it’s still me, I’m just accessing a better version.
Can I keep it up? Absolutely, but maybe not. I have every confidence that if my team stays solid, I keep working hard, and I stay healthy I can continue to improve. But nothing is ever promised, and right now I’m just trying to enjoy the process, the day in day out grind.
On set with @TennisChannel this afternoon! Busy day but now time to relax and get ready for tomorrow ✅ pic.twitter.com/090h4N82jd
— Nicole Gibbs (@Gibbsyyyy) March 11, 2016
In other words, this recent improvement in my results has been a long time coming, and all of a sudden.
Lately, I’ve put in the work, committed to the things I’ve needed to improve, and changed my outlook to include a stronger-than-ever sense of self belief. And it’s been coming together quickly in the past few months. Things that didn’t seem attainable six months ago are feeling well within reach. When asked how far I think I can go in tennis, “Top 10” has replaced, “I don’t know, maybe Top 50.”
Well… $h!+#keepingtheroutine #icebath #recovery #comingforyoumiami ? pic.twitter.com/Oz4RfO2prz
— Nicole Gibbs (@Gibbsyyyy) March 15, 2016
This is all new for me. But I’ve also wanted to be a pro tennis player since I was 11. Every life decision I’ve made since then has centered around maximizing my tennis, giving myself the best shot. Tens of thousands of hours have been spent sweating out weakness in the gym and pushing through insecurities and frustrations on court. So, in one way, I’m humbled by my recent success, but in another way, I expect this and much more.
Sorry for doubting your outlook, Genie.
What a week ?? pic.twitter.com/gWS0zxTB9q
— Nicole Gibbs (@Gibbsyyyy) March 16, 2016
To keep up with Gibbsy, you can follow her on Twitter @Gibbsyyyy and Instagram. Nicole Gibbs will feature as a regular columnist for WTA Insider. Click here for her first column, and check back regularly as she files a variety of dispatches from the road to give fans a glimpse of her life on tour.
Victoria Azarenka takes on Serena Williams in the final of the BNP Paribas Open.