Dubai: World No 3 Karolina Pliskova reiterated that she has left Dubai with her head held high after her shock loss to Kristina Mladenovic in their second round match of the Dubai Duty Free Women’s Open.
Seeded No 2 in Dubai, Pliskova — the champion at last weekend’s Qatar Open — went down 2-6, 4-6 against an inspired Mladenovic on centre court on Tuesday.
Coming into the Dubai tournament, Pliskova had an inspiring 15-2 win/loss record in the first seven weeks of the season.
However, the loss to Mladenovic brought to an end a streak that had seen the Czech player already win her seventh and eighth singles titles in Brisbane and Doha respectively.
This year’s exploits
Her exploits for 2017 started off with the Brisbane Open crown and were followed by a second straight Grand Slam quarter-final at the Australian Open where she fell in three sets to unseeded Mirjana Lucic-Baroni.
A week later, Pliskova — who has an identical twin sister Kristyna also playing on tour — was the cornerstone of the Czech Republic’s win over Spain in their first round Fed Cup match against Spain. So given all this success, the 24-year-old World No 3 has decided not to be too severe on herself.
“Well, there [is] definitely some good that I can take from her. I don’t want to be disappointed about this match, because I won so many matches already this year. I’m just happy about it, and this was just one bad tournament, I would say,” Pliskova told media after her loss to Mladenovic.
“There are not a lot of things to improve, and going in to Indian Wells I have some time off for practising. So honestly, I am excited about it and, yeah, I’m going to forget about this tournament loss really fast,” she added.
