Garbine Muguruza doesn’t seem to feel the burden of being the best in the industry yet: The Spaniard had no problems with Caroline Garcia in Tokyo and is in the semi-finals.
After the seventh game of the second set, Garbine Muguruza used the services of her coach Sam Sumyk again – just to find out what the spectators in Tokyo had already noticed:”You play very, very good, Garbine” A few minutes later the ruling Wimbledon winner and number one in the world had the semi-final move clear.
The very good game lasts for the whole summer of 2017, at the latest since those glorious days in London.Not even in the last sixteen of the US Open, where Muguruza was defeated by Petra Kvitova in top form, the Spaniard let herself hang – as she had occasionally done in the past few years.
In Tokyo, however, things are going well for the industry’s top players, who needed 81 minutes to beat Garcia.Muguruza was consistently focused on her second appearance in the Japanese capital, taking the initiative at the right moment, scoring 16 points more than her French opponent.
Muguruza had climbed to the top position in women’s tennis after the US Open, making her the third woman after Angelique Kerber and Karolina Pliskova to be named best in her class this year.The victory at the tournament in Cincinnati – which Muguruza might have tasted in retrospect, but it also made this possible because of the grains she might have missed in Flushing Meadows.
In the semi-finals, Garbine Muguruza will face Dominika Cibulkova from Slovakia or Caroline Wozniacki on Saturday, with the prospect of being able to meet one of her predecessors in the final on the pitch in the sun: Angelique Kerber had prevailed against Karolina Pliskova in the second quarter-finals of the day, now playing against Ansatasija Pavlyuchenkova.Muguruza has a 5:3 record against the Germans and has won the last five games.including the Wimbledon 2017 round of sixteen – one of the better matches in the entire tennis year.
Here is the single tableau of the ladies in Tokyo