Sevastova held the step with World No. 17 Karolina Pliskova in the first set. Neither of the players broke in the first set, and both had one break point each. Pliskova had her chance at 3-3, and Sevastova pressured Pliskova at 5-4 to get a set point, but the set went to a tiebreak nonetheless. Pliskova went to a 4-0 lead in the tiebreak, but then won only one more point in the set, losing.
Pliskova won 11 points in a row to start the set, and she didn’t let Sevastova come back, winning the second set 6-0 in swift 23 minutes. Beginning of the deciding set looked like it will again go into a tiebreak, as there were no break points until 3-2. What should have been an easy hold for Sevastova, leading 40-15, turned into a break for Pliskova. The Czech really upped her level and won the next 2 games as well to take the match in 1 hour and 37 minutes. Pliskova has shown incredible service performance, facing only one break point and winning 87% of points after first serve. One thing that stained this match for Pliskova is another lost tiebreak, meaning that she won only 3 out of 11 (27%) tiebreaks in 2016. Next obstacle for the No. 1 seed will be Anna Tatishvili.
No. 2 seed Johanna Konta is finally back on the British lawns, where she first made herself known to the public last year due to reaching two quarterfinals. Konta had a great first third of the year, but won only 2 matches on clay. She know hopes to get her groove back on grass. Her opponent, cancer survivor Vicky Duval is yet to win a match this year. After three losses to Top 20 players in Australia, she was sidelined by yet another injury and is coming back on grass.
Duval took an early lead of 2-0, but a re-break came immediately from the Brit. Duval held with Konta to 3-3, and after that lost 9 games in a row to lose the match. Konta was really dominant in the second set, facing only 1 break point in the entire match.
Despite losing in the first round of Roland Garros, Konta still moved up to No. 18 in the rankings, her new career high. “It was funny to see that I moved up in the rankings considering I didn’t get any points in the last tournament. It’s a nice thing to see but I am very much focused on being here and I am really enjoying my time, the weather is beautiful so I am quite grateful for that. It was my first match on the grass and I’m very happy to have been able to give myself an opportunity to play another one.”
Anna Tatishvili stopped the meeting of the twin sisters in Nottingham. The naturalized American defeated Kristyna Pliskova 6-4 7-6, and will take on Karolina Pliskova next. Other players advancing to the second round are the 8th seed Christina McHale, Anett Kontaveit, and Saisai Zheng who defeated the young wildcard Freya Christie. Final round of qualifying was also conducted today. The qualifiers are the Chinese Top seed Kai-Lin Zhang, young Aussie Ashleigh Barty for whom this is only her second tournament in singles since the comeback, Michelle Larcher De Brito of Portugal, and the Brit Tara Moore. Because of the withdrawal of defending champion Ana Konjuh, Tamira Paszek got in the main draw as a lucky loser.
On Tuesday, watch out for the comeback of Caroline Wozniacki, and two very interesting matches of lower ranked players. Laura Robson will face off with Larcher De Brito, and Ashleigh Barty will play Shuai Peng. The Brits in action are the aforementioned Laura Robson, Naomi Broady, Heather Watson and Tara Moore. The British wild card doubles team of Freya Christie and Laura Robson will face the Pliskova twins.
