Karolina Pliskova—rejuvenated and undefeated—has flown under the radar

With most players at the quarterfinal stage of a Grand Slam, we consider it a good sign if they’ve been cruising through their matches in straight sets. With Karolina Pliskova, the opposite may be true.

When she’s on her game and coolly lasering aces and winners into the corners, few opponents can stay with her. It’s when she’s off her game, and those lasers are finding the net instead, that this low-key Czech has struggled in the past to stay upbeat. “I’m always so hard on myself,” Pliskova said last year; it’s an attitude that can turn defeatist when things don’t go her way.

So far in 2019, Pliskova has fought hard against her fatalistic tendencies. You might not know it, since she has mostly gone under the media radar Down Under, but she’s 9-0 so far this season. She won an opening-week title in Brisbane, and she played her most impressive match—a 6-3, 6-1 drubbing of two-time Grand Slam champ Garbiñe Muguruza—to reach the quarterfinals at the Australian Open. But it hasn’t all been aces and blowouts. Pliskova has had to scrap her way through five three-setters in those 10 wins. She came back from the brink of defeat against Lesia Tsurenko in the Sydney final, and battled hard to hold off a much-improved Camila Giorgi in the third round in Melbourne.

“I’ve been playing well the last couple of matches,” Pliskova said after beating Muguruza. “I had a tough match the day before, so I was feeling confident about this matchup somehow today.”

Sometimes winning the close ones, even when you don’t play flawlessly, gives you more confidence an easy victory cruise. You know you can fight if you have to.

Pliskova’s surge began last July. After losing early at Wimbledon, she split with her coach, Tomas Krupa, and began working with two former WTA players, Rennae Stubbs and Conchita Martinez. With that team in place, she reached the quarterfinals at the US Open, won the title in Tokyo, and advanced to the semis at the WTA Finals in Singapore.

“I just felt like I needed to do some change,” Pliskova said last summer. “I just felt like I need somebody a little bit more positive...Sometimes it’s just important to understand how the player feels, because [Stubbs] was in the same situation. So for me, this is important. And also, it’s a woman. So we have maybe different feelings than men sometimes.”

When Pliskova gets passive or negative or flatlines emotionally, Stubbs challenges her to dig deeper and show how much she wants to win. In the Sydney final, Stubbs’ belief rubbed off on Pliskova.

“I have to say that Rennae helped me quite a bit today,”said Pliskova of the mid-match pep talk that her coach gave her. “It was actually that she believed I could still win it. I felt there is no chance that I could win this match. Of course I tried, but I felt so far away from playing good tennis tonight...But she said, ‘I’m absolutely sure you can win this match,’ which gave me some confidence and belief I can do it.”

This off-season, for the first time, Pliskova left the dark, cold Czech Republic and trained for three weeks with Martinez in sunny Tenerife.

“It’s kind of nice that she gets the different personalities with Conchi [Martinez] and I,” Stubbs said in Brisbane. “Conchi works a lot on her feet and her fast hands and things like that, because that’s really what Conchi did so well. And I’m a little bit more transitional work, coming into the net, serve.”

“The one thing we definitely are very hard on her about is—Conchi and I will go to run for a ball in practice more than she will sometimes, and we’re like, ‘Why are we wanting to run for that ball more than you?’”

Stubbs and Martinez hope to transfer their passion for hard work and enthusiasm for the sport to Pliskova. That begins with improving her footwork, and getting her to move forward instinctively during rallies and take the ball earlier, rather than waiting passively for the next shot.

“For her it’s getting lower and realizing she can move a little more efficiently and a little bit more aggressively,” said Stubbs, who is also doing TV work at the Australian Open.

So far, so good. Could Pliskova be the Simona Halep of 2019? The parallels are easy to see: An old-school Aussie coach—in Halep’s case, that was Darren Cahill—gets the most out of a talented but tough-on-herself player who has yet to fulfill her potential. For now, Pliskova can’t think too far ahead: She plays Serena Williams next. Pliskova beat Serena at the US Open two years ago, but Serena turned that result around at Flushing Meadows in 2018. Pliskova sounds like she’s ready for the challenge.

“Well, we played US Open. I didn’t play well that match, so for sure would be good revenge to play her again,” Pliskova said of a rematch with Serena. “Different conditions here, I think I’m playing a little bit better than last year.”

Win or lose, there’s a long road ahead in 2019, and Team Pliskova seems committed to traveling it together. They seem happy about it, too. After beating Muguruza, the normally stony-faced Czech grinned from ear to ear. For her, that may be the best sign of all.

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