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Post by Admin on Feb 17, 2021 4:39:15 GMT
A set and 2-1 down, Karolína Muchová sits in her chair. Movement and muffle from behind a black Adidas face mask shows she is speaking to the two medicos hovering in front. The one with the walkie talkie strapped to his trousers clasps her wrist between thumb and two fingers, feeling for a pulse that is clearly present but has been very much absent on Rod Laver Arena. The Czech 24-year-old has met her Australian Open match in Ash Barty, outrun and outwitted for the 24 minutes it took the world No 1 to claim the opening set. Muchová has been reaching awkwardly at her neck, and something clearly warrants further assessment. A temperature check, at least. She is hot and bothered to Barty’s cool and composed. Clammy to Barty’s crisp. After the match she reveals her “head was spinning”. Walkie talkie man reads the mercury then nods to his colleague and the pair, both shouldering backpacks with medical bits and bobs, lead Muchová from the court and down the tunnel. Barty’s challenger is gone. Quite literally, she has left the scene of the slaughter. But she is also gone in a figurative sense. Nothing can turn this carnage around, this straitjacket of a quarter-final in which there is no room to move or air to breathe before the Australian world No 1 interrupts her air supply once more. This is reminiscent of Barty’s opener against Danka Kovinić, the Montenegrin who dropped the opening set 6-0 and was double bagelled thereafter. Muchová does avoid this when Barty, who had raced to 5-0 in the first after holding serve to love, gifted Muchová a service game. The 2018 French Open champion atoned for those unforced errors almost immediately with a passing shot down the line well deserving of a rapid first-set victory .
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Post by Admin on Feb 18, 2021 3:24:30 GMT
Karolina Muchova has made the staggering admission that she wasn't injured when she took a controversial medical timeout against Ash Barty. Muchova left the Australian Open in shock on Wednesday when she came back from dropping the first set 6-1 to knock Barty out of her home grand slam in the quarter-finals. However Muchova's win will forever be tainted by controversy after a contentious medical timeout in the second set. The Czech player called for the trainer after Barty broke her serve to go up 2-1 in the second and appeared to be in tears on her courtside seat. Muchova then went off court and made Barty wait for around 15 minutes as she received treatment. From there the 27th-ranked star appeared a completely different player, reeling off nine of the next 11 games to leave Barty in shock. Fans were left fuming on social media, accusing Muchova of taking the timeout simply as a tactic to break Barty's momentum. And the Czech player only fuelled the outrage with a startling admission in her post-match interview that she wasn't injured.
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Post by Admin on Feb 18, 2021 22:13:59 GMT
After coming close last year, Jennifer Brady reached her first Grand Slam final with a gripping three-set victory over Karolina Muchova that featured a mammoth final game. The American and her massive ground strokes ultimately got the better of the Czech’s all-around game, 6-4 3-6 6-4, at Australian Open 21 to set up an appetising finale with on-fire Naomi Osaka. Brady converted on her fifth match point and sunk to her knees at Rod Laver Arena, minutes after thinking she had already won only to realise her backhand had been called long. Karolina Muchova was brave in defeat Muchova nearly kept the affair going while Brady’s big first serve dried up, seeing three break points vanish, as the returning crowd showed their appreciation of the battle in front of them. Brady and Osaka are no strangers. They faced off in September’s US Open semifinals, producing a three-set classic that prompted Osaka to say during the Australian summer that it was one of the top two matches she has ever played. Osaka prevailed in New York that day and went on to lift a third Grand Slam trophy, all part of her current 20-match win streak. Thursday’s clash certainly wasn’t vintage but the conclusion surely made up for it. Brady found her game at the right time, in the third set, after a tally of 12 winners and 30 unforced errors in the first two sets. Brady does thrive on hard courts. The 25-year-old has dropped two sets at Melbourne Park after her spell in hard quarantine.
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Post by Admin on Feb 19, 2021 21:39:46 GMT
Naomi Osaka: "I'm playing with a different purpose" press conference (SF) | Australian Open 2021 Naomi Osaka's press conference following her semifinal win over Serena Williams at the Australian Open 2021. World No.3 Naomi Osaka has welcomed the change of Japan's Olympic Ministers after former chief Yoshiro Mori stepped down for making sexist remarks. It was announced today Seiko Hashimoto would take over as chief of the Tokyo Olympic organising committee. Hashimoto, a former athlete turned politician, is a seven-time Olympian having competed at four Winter Games and three Summer Games in speed skating and sprint cycling. Fifty-six-year-old Hashimoto was named president of the Tokyo Olympic organising committee after a meeting of its executive board, which is 80 per cent male. She replaces 83-year-old Mori, who is a former Japanese prime minister. Hashimoto's arrival isn't without controversy following a large outcry in Japan and around the world after Mori made claims that women speak too much during an online meeting of the committee's board of trustees. She said today's unveiling was an example of what women have "had to fight for" in the battle against gender bias. "I think for me, what it means is that there's a lot of things I think people used to accept; the things that used to be said, but you're seeing the newer generation not tolerate a lot of things," she said. "I feel like it's really good because you're pushing forward, barriers are being broken down, especially for females. "We've had to fight for so many things just to be equal. Even a lot of things we still aren't equal. Yeah, I thought that was a good thing."
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Post by Admin on Feb 20, 2021 20:36:34 GMT
As Naomi Osaka strode through the Champion's Walk leading to the court for the Australian Open final -- headphones on her ears, racket bag strapped to her back -- she reached out her left hand to tap a panel marked with her name and the year of her previous title there.
Not a big deal, she explained. Just a bit of superstition. Less than 10 minutes later, she began the match against Jennifer Brady. And less than 1½ hours later, Osaka won the last point, because that's what she does when the stakes are the greatest on her sport's biggest stages.
Osaka improved to 4-0 in Grand Slam finals by grabbing six consecutive games to pull away in what initially was a tight contest, beating Brady 6-4, 6-3 at Melbourne Park on Saturday.
"You don't go into a final wanting to be the runner-up. For me, I feel like every opportunity that I play a Slam is an opportunity to win a Slam," said 23-year-old Osaka, who will move up to No. 2 in the WTA rankings. "So I think maybe I put that pressure on myself too much, but honestly, it's working out in my favor right now."
Serena's latest loss sparks more questions about her future, but not about her legacy With serves that reached 122 mph and produced six aces, and returns that helped create six breaks, Osaka became the first woman to win her first four major finals since Monica Seles did it 30 years ago.
That is part of Osaka's 12-0 record in quarterfinals, semifinals and finals at the majors.
"She plays so aggressive that she puts so much pressure on you to perform well," said Brady, a 25-year-old from Pennsylvania who played college tennis at UCLA and was participating in a Slam final for the first time. "And that's something that not every tennis player has that ability to do."
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