It rarely happens that Serena Williams has a 5-1 lead in the third set and that her opponent recovers, but that’s exactly what Karolina Pliskova did in the Australian Open quarterfinals, retaining her perfect win-loss record in 2019 with a 6-4 4-6 7-5 victory on Wednesday.
We are used to seeing Serena coming back from the brink of defeat, but the American rarely let’s that scenario happen to her opponents. Today in Melbourne, however, the seventh-seeded Pliskova won the last six games of their quarterfinal and capitalized on her third match point, after Williams wasted four of her own, not being able to handle Pliskova’s power and precision in those crucial moments.