Australian Open 2019, Semi-Final: Naomi Osaka vs Karolina Pliskova, Preview and Prediction

In one of the most riveting matches of the 2019 Australian Open, Karolina Pliskova won her quarter-final match from being 1-5 down in the deciding set, that too against arguably the greatest women’s tennis player, Serena Williams.

A suspect foot fault and a potential ankle injury may have derailed Serena when it mattered the most, but nothing should be taken away from the persevering and courageous performance from the former world number one.

She did not give up when a lesser player would have, and saved four match points on her way to an incredible victory.

It will be a shame if tennis pundits make the vanquished Serena and not Pliskova the center piece of their post-match analysis, the way they did when Osaka had defeated Serena in the 2018 US Open final, only to see herself being reduced to a footnote by many analysts after the biggest win of her career.

2019 Australian Open - Day 10

Karolina Pliskova is now on a ten-match winning streak, and her back-to-the-wall performance against Serena shows how she has added grit and determination to the exhilarating stroke-making that she has always been capable of.

In the semi-final, she will meet Naomi Osaka. Ironically, it was Pliskova who had snapped a ten-match winning streak of Osaka last year when she handed the Japanese youngster a straight-sets defeat at the Pan Pacific Open.

Can Osaka do the same and snap Pliskova’s ten-match winning streak? She certainly has the ability and the fire power to do so. And she has shown in her short career that she is capable of raising her game in the big moments.

2019 Australian Open - Day 10

Unlike Pliskova’s match, Osaka’s was a pretty one-sided encounter, where she needed just over an hour to get the better of the sixth seed Elina Svitolina. She lost just five games in the match and her performance in the second set was deserving of a grand slam champion.

Osaka has improved her return game a lot in the last one year, as has been evident throughout this tournament. She has broken her opponents’ serves multiple times in every match. In the quarter-final, she broke Svitolina’s serve a whopping five times as well, but surprisingly despite serving big, she has not been at her best on her own serve.

Though the match against Svitolina was pretty one-sided at the end, she still lost her serve a couple of times. She has now lost her serve eleven times in five matches, so she will need to do better with her own serve against Pliskova, who is looking for her first grand slam title.

As Pliskova said after her quarter-final match, she is looking forward to the challenge against Osaka, while also cheekily mentioning that no opponent can be as dangerous as Serena.

She may well be right, but she will need to guard against any sort of complacency against Asia’s number one women’s tennis player.

Prediction: Karolina Pliskova to win in three sets

Also Check out: Australian Open 2019, Semi Final: Rafael Nadal vs Stefanos Tsitsipas, Preview, and Prediction

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