Karolina Pliskova has won a high standard battle of the Czechs at Margaret Court Arena on Saturday, defeating countrywomen Lucie Safarova 7-6(6) 7-5 to book her place in the round of 16.
MORE: All the latest scores and results
With just a single break of serve for the entire match, the pair (seeded No.6 and No.29 respectively) entertained the weekend crowd with one hour and 37 minutes of quality play.
“It’s always a tough match to play against a Czech woman,” Pliskova, a quarterfinalist at Melbourne Park last year, said. “(Lucie) can be very dangerous, she’s won some good matches here, so I was ready for a tough battle.”
“I’m just happy to hold my serve until the match finished,” she added. “That helped me to win. It’s the most important part of my game and I’m just happy it’s working.”
Pliskova did indeed put on a dominant serving display, ending the match with her 11th ace (adding another $1100 to childhood cancer charities). She hit her first serve at 77 per cent, winning the point 85 per cent of the time.
While she perhaps lacked a bit of footwork and energy in comparison to her previous two outings thus far at Melbourne Park, which she won for the loss of just nine games in total – Pliskova looked every bit in the kind of form to see her challenge for the title.
Safarova battled impressively in the pair’s eighth meeting, bringing up a set point of her own in the opening set tiebreaker, but the pressure applied by Pliskova eventually became too much, and in the 11th game of the second set she blinked, allowing the world No.6 enough space to make a decisive move before serving out the match with ease.
Pliskova has now gotten the better of Safarova in their last three encounters, but never with ease, the older Czech taking the first set from her the last time they met (in Beijing, 2016).
For Safarova, her 12th main draw appearance in Australia and 50th major in total comes to an end, but the two-time doubles champion (2015 and 2017 with Bethanie Mattek-Sands) remains in the hunt for a third title, this time with Czech partner Barbora Strycova, who may well be Pliskova’s next opponent as she takes on American lucky loser Bernarda Pera later on Saturday.