With split feelings, Czech tennis player Karolína Muchová evaluated the premiere progression to the eight finals of the US Open.
On the fast court, she fought with the Romanian Sorana Cirstea in a match, she was upset after a bad second set, but in the end, thanks to her courage to go to the net, she averted three sword balls and advanced.
She won the win in two and a quarter hours, and many would be proud and remember for a long time the great turn that Muchová showed in the third set. “I probably don’t. I’d rather forget about this match. I didn’t play very well,” she said self-critically.
Unlike the previous two matches, she made more mistakes than winning strokes (37:27) and after the first set she suffered in the second set. “I played below average and got her back on horseback. I wasn’t able to keep the balloon in exchange. I was mad at myself and tried to get there in the third,” said the 26th player in the world.
She was long behind Cirstea in the deciding set. She had already lost 3: 5, but she didn’t let her opponent finish the match. And it was similar in the tie-break, in which she deflected three matchballs at 3: 6. “I don’t really know what’s going on in my head. I wanted to play it, I went for it and it worked out for me,” Muchová breathed.
Coincidentally, two days before the match, they talked to coach David Kotyza about how many times in her career she had won the match from the match. “I couldn’t think of almost any,” Muchova said, adding, “Perhaps I’ve averted one or two matchwords sometime, and this will probably be the most. It was mainly three matchwords in a row, that counts more.”
In an unfavorable state, when she already seemed to leave defeated, she pulled out the best blows. “I’m glad I squeezed it in the most important moments of the match,” said the Olomouc native.
She didn’t show the tension in her face at the end. “Actually, I’ve had nerves for myself, but I guess my phlegmatic nature helps. Even though I was downstairs, I still went into every balloon and didn’t fire it somewhere blindly.”
In the end, she went to the net more and more often. She averted the third of the matchballs with a winning volley. “I didn’t just want to play from behind. My hand didn’t flicker anymore and sometimes almost a mile of cars flew by. I feel strong on the net, so I went for it.”
The bad feeling from the game may have been due to the fact that the surface on court number seven was faster than the previous two courts on which she played. “It came down a lot and it was hard to deal with. She played fast and it was hard to create anything out of it,” Muchová said. “I’m glad I fought it and turned it over for myself. But it was a slick.”
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