Karolina Muchova is the best player you won't see at the WTA Finals

To many tennis aficionados, she is a dream come true, the closest thing the sport has to Roger Federer now that the Swiss icon’s stylish game is gone. But to a much smaller, albeit more elite cohort, Karolina Muchova is nothing less than a nightmare.

Muchova, the best player you won’t see at this year’s WTA Finals, is pure hell on Top 10 opponents. (She’s currently ranked No. 25.) Since the start of 2023, the 28-year old Czech has compiled a mystifying 8-10 record against that group. It’s a deep mystery, given all the time Muchova has missed due to injury, rehab and competitive rust. But there are partial explanations.

“Someone that talented creates a lot of difficulties and discomfort for a great player,” Tennis Channel analyst Paul Annacone told me recently. Annacone believes that whatever the circumstances—in Muchova’s case, a deceptively low ranking due to injury interruptions—an underdog feels less pressure, and can thus play with greater freedom in the pressure moments where favorites may tighten up.

“When you’re as good as Muchova yet you’re not supposed to win,” he sayd, “it’s easier for you and harder for your opponent to play relaxed.”

It takes extreme talent to exploit that advantage, and Muchova has it in spades. Before injury complications entered the picture, she was the first player since Martina Navratilova to win five of her first six clashes with Top 5 opponents. These days, though, it takes a special sort of player to survive at the elite level without a major weapon, and Navratilova’s take from earlier times still rings true: “She’s old-school, classic tennis all around. No massive weapon, but her biggest weapon is her variety.”

Tennis Channel analyst Andrea Petkovic put it this way when commentating on Muchova’s recent US Open match against Anastasia Potapova: “She has so much variety. She can change from a slice to a drop shot without you noticing. It’s undetectable. So you have to protect against both possibilities.”

Muchova reached the semifinals at a major for the fourth time at this year’s US Open. As if to underscore Petkovic’s observation, she also hit the most spectacular shot of the entire event. While running hell bent toward the doubles alley along the baseline in the deuce court, she fielded a smash by Katie Volynets with a leaping, behind-the-back reverse forehand lob that fell good.

That kind of thing is all in a day’s work for Muchova, who also has admitted to not always selecting the obvious, prudent shot. Thanks to her flair and superb mobility, Muchova can turn to a “third or fourth” option for any shot, which is how a beckoning backhand, down-the-line approach shot ends up being a delicate, cross-court drop shot that may leave an opponent rooted where she stands.

“It's something, like, terrible. I always am [thinking], ‘Oh, I hope nobody saw this,’ but there are plenty of people around,” Muchova said at Roland Garros last year. “So, yeah, I'm still working on this.”

That effort to rein in that explosive, acrobatic gam hasn’t been entirely successful, to the delight of fans who are ga-ga for creative tennis. And it isn’t as if Muchova is sacrificing herself to please them. Her game, in all its color and variety, clearly works.

Sometimes, though, Muchova must feel that she is living a real-life version of the popular movie, Groundhog Day.

In 2021, she suffered a lower back injury in Cincinnati and played just one more match that year, unable to return until the Miami Open the following March. In 2022, she left the court at Roland Garros in tears following a severe ankle sprain during her third-round match. Physically compromised, Muchova’s ranking plummeted to No. 154 by year’s end.

Healthy at last in 2023, Muchova produced a stunning semifinal upset of Aryna Sabalenka at Roland Garros and wound up the runner-up to No. 1 Iga Swiatek. She appeared ready to join the elites when she entered the Top 10 later that year and then lost to Coco Gauff in the US Open semis, but a soreness in her right wrist grew worse, and it became evident that the problem required surgery—hence her 10-month hiatus that ended only at Eastbourne this year.

“There has been many moments, many lows, from one injury to another,” the 26-year-old had told reporters after her sensational upset of Sabalenka in Paris last year. “Some doctor(s) told me, you know, maybe you’ll not do sport anymore. But I always kept it kind of positive in my mind.”

The numbers are sobering, even if many of the results are heartening. Muchova played just 77 matches since the start of 2023, 59 fewer than Sabalenka and 69 fewer than Swiatek, who is roughly five years younger. Just imagine what Muchova could have accomplished, were it not for all that time missed and with a fully dialed-in game.

Since the recent Olympic Games, Muchova has not lost a completed match to a player outside the Top 10. And—shades of Bill Murray!—Muchova upended No. 2 Sabalenka in a sensational quarterfinal in the China Open, halting the Belarussan’s 15-match winning streak. She roared back from 2-4 down in the third set of the two hour and 46-minute battle.

Muchova followed up that win with an upset of No. 7 Qinwen Zheng, the Olympic gold medalist, before a wildly partisan crowd of 15,000 in Beijing. Her tournament ended with a loss to her nemesis, Gauff. The American star has won all three meetings with Muchova, two of them in the summer of 2023.

“I didn’t know how this year is going to look like, if I will play, if I will not play, what my level is going to be,” Muchova said after her play in Beijing. “Making a final here, it's just so nice. Such a nice feeling.”

But then Gauff—who won 6-1, 6-3—reminded Muchova: One person’s dream can be another one’s nightmare.