With the 128 women at this year’s US open whittled down to the last four, the two hot tips at the start of the tournament were still in place.
And that meant Angelique Kerber still had the chance of a very big coup indeed: not just winning her second Major of the year but displacing Serena Williams as No1 in the world.
Williams has already passed numerous milestones at this tournament, not least in winning more Grand Slam matches than anyone else, male or female. Now she was targeting a record number of US Opens and Grand Slam titles in the Open era—but also aiming to hold onto the No1 ranking that she had held for three and a half years. Should she do so, she would overtake Steffi Graf’s WTA Open record of 186 consecutive weeks after the US Open.
But to do that, she had at least to reach the final here, and if Kerber reached the final too, Williams had to win.
Much of the focus was on Kerber, of course. The German woman had denied Williams her record-equalling 22nd Major at this year’s Australian Open in a three-set thriller. But come Wimbledon, and a replay of the final, Williams got her record—or at least equalled it.
Back on home turf, where the pressure proved so great for Williams a year ago, the American super-star was the favourite to win No23, even in the face of a tough draw. Things fell in her favour with several seeds falling as far as the quarters, and then she played a gutsy three setter to beat Simona Halep for this chance to play for the final.
Kerber, meanwhile, was proving every inch the Grand Slam champion in putting out the likes of Petra Kvitova and Roberta Vinci to reach the semis without dropping a set. She would take on a resurgent though unseeded Caroline Wozniacki in a contest that promised much.
But the woman few reckoned with was Karoline Pliskova, the No10 seed.
The 24-year-old Czech woman, who stands at over 6ft tall, has steadily been making her big presence felt on the tour. Last year, she reached No7 after a packed schedule that got her to six finals but only one title, so this year has been better planned, and excluded the Rio Olympics.
She reached the semis of Indian Wells, won on the grass of Nottingham followed by a final at Eastbourne, and arrived here with the biggest title of her career, in Cincinnati, where she beat Svetlana Kuznetsova, then French Open champion Garbine Muguruza and finally Kerber. What’s more, she was outgunning Williams at her own game: Pliskova led the WTA tour this year for aces, with 439.
In New York, her form and confidence grew with wins over No17 seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, and then Serena’s sister, Venus, to take her winning run to 10, but she had never before been past the third round at a Grand Slam.
That had already changed: Now she would take the biggest step in her career.
She broke Williams in the third game and even worked another chance in the fifth. Come the seventh game, though, Williams was 0-40 down and looking uncharacteristically heavy-footed. The errors seemed to stream from her racket, the result in large part to some accurate but uninhibited hitting to the baseline corners by Pliskova. That, combined with such impressive serving—and she was standing toe-to-toe with the best server in the game as both women averaged around 110mph for their first deliveries—reaped rewards.
Indeed Pliskova, with remarkable calmness, pounded a couple of heavy backhands to draw one more error and the break, and served out the set, 6-2, in just 26 minutes.
Williams, found herself under immediate pressure in the second set, too, but this time she aced and then thumped a forehand winner. The crowd roared and Williams roared, too .
The American certainly had the will and the noise of the crowd on her side, to the extent that there were ripples of applause when Pliskova made any error, such as the double fault to bring up deuce in the fourth game. She silenced them with two aces to hold.
And for a tall woman, the Czech has built some great pace and mobility in the gym. She reached wide to fire a forehand return-of-serve winner of the highest quality to break for a 3-2 lead. But could her mental strength match her physical strength so close to such an upset?
Sure enough, three tight shots and a forehand long handed the break straight back, but there were signs—later confirmed by Williams’s coach—that she was not moving perfectly: her left knee had been playing up since the start of her Halep match. It was surely to blame for the rare sight of two straight double faults in the seventh game. She aced twice to compensate, but every point was a battle.
So locked were they, indeed, that it would require a tie-break after Pliskova held serve with an ace.
The Czech took a 3-0 lead, too, but tightened again to double fault for 3-3. Williams retrieved a remarkable smash from the baseline to take a marginal lead and fired a massive backhand down the line for 5-4.
But Pliskova would not back off, painted the lines with her groundstrokes, and took back the lead, 6-5. And as if to put a full-stop to one of Williams most uneven performances, she double-faulted on match point, 7-6(5).
Pliskova is a calm individual, but her words said it all.
“It was always a dream to get a title, get to the semi-final, get to the final. I hope I didn’t stop yet, that there is still one more step to go. I’ll do anything for getting the title. [But] even if I don’t get it, it’s a big result. It doesn’t happen often, you know, that you’re playing a semi-final against Serena on centre court in New York. It doesn’t happen often that you’re in the final of Grand Slams.”
It was, though, a subdued Williams who came quickly to her press conference. She would not, she said, comment on the biggest element of this loss, the No1 ranking. For her loss meant that the result of the second semi made no difference: Kerber would be the new No1. But the German did, in any case, make relatively short work of Wozniacki with a 6-4, 6-3 result in an hour and a half.
However, Williams admitted she had been distracted by her knee: “I’m not downplaying anything. Karolina played great today. I think if she had played any less then maybe I would have had a chance. So I think I wasn’t at 100 per cent, but I also think she played well. She deserved to win today.
[But] she’s been on tour for numerous years and she’s had some good wins. She was doing so well last year, was so close in so many finals, and I think maybe this was her year to really do well.”
So Kerber, the new world No1, will play for her second Major of the year against a Grand Slam final debutante. The odds are in the German’s favour—but it would be dangerous to discount this new confident version of Pliskova.