WTA Finals: Karolina Pliskova convinced – but remains silent about the “coach stealing”.

With a strong performance, Karolina Pliskova won her first match at the WTA finals in Singapore – if she retains this form, the way to the title is through her.

By Florian Goosmann from Singapore

The prelude on Sunday afternoon in Singapore began with new and familiar faces. Yayuk Basuki and Tamarine Tanasurgan, two former top-20 players, had the honour of celebrating their youngsters, the WTA Future Stars, who had signed up for the U14 and U16 finals at noon on Sunday. For the cup presentation itself, the “Grande Dame” of tennis was at the start, who allegedly helped to design it herself: Martina Navratilova.

The former world number one in all tennis categories and record winner of the unofficial world championship (eight victories in singles, eleven doubles!), which can be easily reached on Twitter under @martina, summarized the fascination of this year’s “real” WTA finals:”Fresh blood, old-fashioned faces – everything is there”, said the 61-year-old, who is the man of the world.

On the one hand, the opening match was a more than familiar face. Venus Williams, 37 years old, is in Singapore for the first time after her strong season with two major finals (Australian Open and Wimbledon), crazy enough for the fifth time at the WTA finals, which she also cancelled in earlier times. How motivated she really is this year – it’s the big question.

For Karolina Pliskova on the other hand, it is more or less a matter of having a strong start to the season come to an end and maybe attacking the big trophies next. And if she maintains the form of the first match, she will undoubtedly do so. The Czech seemed to have found exactly the right mix for the slow indoor arena, she played aggressively without taking any unnecessary risks, and she moved well on the defensive – two things Williams missed. 6:2,6:2 was the score after 72 minutes for the current number three in the Porsche Race.

Pliskova himself was more than happy with her performance,”I felt pretty good,” she said, and improved quickly,”I actually felt pretty good,” she had a great week of training with interim coach Rennae Stubbs, working on the main points of her game – serve and return, transitioning to the net and some baseline variations and service,”a better start.

However, she did not want to talk about the topic she made headlines about last week, the “coach stealing” of ex-girlfriend Barbora Strycova,”I don’t want to say anything about it, I’m concentrating on Singapore.”

Opponent Williams summed up her answers extremely briefly, as in the press round on Saturday. After all, she showed the simplest tennis wisdom she could have won the match in two ways:”I should have just played the ball in the field more often”.

In theory, tennis can be so easy.