Pliskova Captures Eastbourne Crown Over Kerber
Karolina Pliskova showed why she is among he top Wimbledon favorites after taking her second Eastbourne title Saturday beating Angelique Kerber 6-1, 6-4.
“Especially on the grass, this serve is working. My game I think from the baseline…normally you’re never gonna ace 20 times with Angie, but you need to just step after the serve and just to be aggressive,” Pliskova said.
“I lost my serve in the first set, but I felt, you know, I could still make this game because I was up in the game. But I think I was serving well, just clever using the slice wide which was working on her. That’s what I did. That’s why I think I was holding my serve quite easily.
“I felt like I was having a lot of chances in the second set, but, you know, it’s always with her you can have some chances but she can fight back because she’s trying to do everything possible.
“On the grass, her shots sometimes just stay too low, so maybe I miss a little bit more during the second set, but I think I didn’t do much wrong today.”
A very powerful Pliskova didn’t drop a set and hardly lost games rolling past the likes of Kiki Bertens and Elise Mertens, surrendering a total of 19 games en route to her 14th career title, third of 2019.
The Czech, though, has struggled at Wimbledon only reaching the final 16 once in seven previous tries, and that was last year.
Meanwhile, Kerber now eyes her title defense at Wimbledon.
“I will try to take the positive things from the whole week, from the last two weeks before going to Wimbledon now,” Kerber said. “I take the positive, how many good matches I had here. Of course today it was not the result that I wished, but I played against a good opponent.
“Right now, of course I will try to think about this match a little bit what could I do better next time. But starting from tomorrow when I arrive in London, I will think about Wimbledon and not anymore about Eastbourne then. So it’s just another tournament next week.”
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