Polish underdog Magda Linette has become the latest player to cause a shock upset at the Australian Open by knocking fourth seed Caroline Garcia out of the Australian Open.
Linette, who had never gone beyond the third round of a Grand Slam until this year, recovered from a slow start to win 7-6(3), 6-4. It is only the third time in her career that she has beaten a top-five player with her two previous wins also occurring at major events. In her latest match, she came back from a double break down to win the opening tiebreaker before breaking Garcia once in the second frame en route to victory.
“It’s great. I don’t know, I feel quite calm actually,” the Polish world No.45 said afterwards.
“I don’t know if I can still believe it or I’m just really happy and still focused, maybe on the next round.”
This year’s Australian Open is Linette’s 30th appearance in a Grand Slam main draw. She is a veteran of the women’s Tour with 2013 being the first year she won a main draw match and 2015 being the year she cracked the top 100. She has won two Tour titles so far in her career.
A somewhat late bloomer in the sport, Linette credits her run at the Australian Open to recent improvements she has made to her game. She is currently coached by Brit Mark Gellard who has previously worked with Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Su-Wei Hsieh.
“We started doing things a little bit differently last summer. I think it was just overall work that we did throughout the whole summer, the U.S. swing,” she said.
“Then we did a little bit easier preseason than usual. I usually really work very hard physically. This time we took it a little bit differently. We kind of thought, Okay, I’m not that young any more, I’m after one surgery, so we need to really be careful about how we approach this.’
“I think I’m so much fresher. Again, it was really important because we finished (the 2022 season) so late. I think that was a really good approach.”
The process of improvement didn’t just focus on Linette’s physical game, work also has to be done on how she handles herself mentally during matches.
“We worked a lot on my emotional management,” she continued.
“We worked a lot on changing the directions and the depth of the ball. But I think this approach of really trying to look a little bit different, grow up a little bit emotionally, like that was a big thing for us as a team.”
Linette will next play former world No.1 Karolina Pliskova in the quarter-finals who she has only beaten twice in nine previous meetings on the Tour. The Czech impressively dropped only four games in her 6-0, 6-4, win over China’s Zhang Shuai.
Should Linette beat Pliskova she would become only the third Polish woman to reach the last four at Melbourne Park after Agnieszka Radwanska and Iga Swiatek.
