Sixteen times Zdeněk Kolář tried to break into the main competition of one of the Grand Slams. He made it to the seventeenth. And once he was there, he wasn’t going to stop. In the first round, he claimed his maiden win at the big four tournaments, knocking out Lucas Pouille to the chagrin of the home fans.
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And the match with world number five Stefanos Tsitsipas? The simple dessert that should have been for the star Greek Kolář became a hard-to-digest morsel. “I was crazy about him. I was frustrated, he returned almost every ball to me. He played a great match,” said the exhausted Greek after a more than four-hour battle, who finally overpowered the Czech hero.
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At first, there were no signs of a huge slaughter. Tsitsipas won the first set 6:3, but lost the second in a tiebreak 10:8 when he had to fend off a set point. The third, again in a shortened game, belonged to Kolář. In the fourth, again in a tiebreak, the Czech representative already led 6:2, but the match did not reach the dream fifth set.
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Zdeněk Kolář in the match against Stefanos TsitsipasPhoto: Profimedia.cz
I felt I was better at times and who knows how it would have turned out in the fifth set. Physically I was fine. I believed I could handle it. But unfortunately, he played it expertly,” said the Czech hero, who was escorted from Susanne Lenglen’s court to the dressing room by enthusiastic applause from the fans.
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After the tournament of his life, Kolar rose to the top of the world rankings when he took 111th place. “It’s still a long way off. Maybe not so much in terms of games, but there are an awful lot of points missing. I’ll come again for the next match and it will be a big fight. I’ll fight and believe that I’ll make it to the hundred,” the Parisian hero remained grounded.
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And his words of caution were soon borne out. The rider has been struggling on the courts since the Paris ride. Five days after the heroic battle with Tsitsipas, he fell in a challenger in Prostějov with the 281st tennis player in the world, Němec Wessels, right after the first matches, he said goodbye to other tournaments of the same category in Bratislava and Blois in France.
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The Wimbledon qualification, where Kolář only finished in the final round, gave an indication that the Czech tennis player could return to form after all. However, he got into the main competition as a “lucky loser”, but he had no chance against the Frenchman Bonzi in the first round. Subsequent challengers in Austria, Romania, Switzerland and most recently Italy always had a common denominator and that was the lightning end in the first round.
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Zdenek Kolář currently ranks 148th in the rankings. However, whether he will ever be able to approach the top 100 remains a question.
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Zdeněk Kolář in the match against Stefanos TsitsipasPhoto: Profimedia.cz
| CYCLING RESULTS SINCE THE FRENCH OPEN | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| tournament | phase | rival | on the leaderboard | result |
| Prostejov | 1. round | Wessels (German) | 281. | 3:6, 6:3, 2:6 |
| Bratislava | 1. round | Bonadio (Ita.) | 192. | 2:6, 2:6 |
| Blois (France) | 1. round | Karlovsky (Rus.) | 262. | 2:6, 4:6 |
| Wimbledon (qualifying) | 3rd round | Vavassori (Ita.) | 210. | 7:6, 6:7, 1:6, 6:7 |
| Wimbledon | 1. round | Greatness (Fra.) | 51. | 3:6, 3:6, 1:6 |
| Salcburk | 1. round | Neuchrist (Rak.) | 366. | 6:7, 3:6 |
| Iasi (Romania) | 1. round | Silva (Port.) | 248. | 4:6, 4:4 scratch. |
| Zug (Switzerland) | 1. round | Virtanen (Fin.) | 272. | 4:6, 4:6 |
| Cordenons (Italy) | 1. round | Chepelev (Russian) | 373. | 6:4, 2:6, 0:6 |
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