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Poland's Magda Linette produced a gritty performance to through to her first-ever quarterfinal after she upset No.4 seed Caroline Garcia of France in straight sets in the ongoing Australian Open here at Rod Laver Arena on Monday.
Linette kept her great run going with a 7-6(3), 6-4 upset against WTA Finals champion Garcia. After falling behind 3-0 with a double break, 4-2, and 5-3 in the first set, Linette eventually turned the match around in one hour and 57 minutes. "I still can't believe it. I don't know what happened. I'm speechless really. I don't want to say I didn't expect it, because coming on the court I was confident with how well I was playing, but she's such an amazing opponent and such a tough one, especially on a big stage. I'm just glad I stayed composed throughout the whole first set, and managed to come back again," WTA quoted Linette as saying in her on-court interview. "I knew I had to serve really well. I was taking my time to make sure that the quality of my serve was there, otherwise, she was really punishing me. You could see it at the beginning," Linette said. "Once I picked up a little bit on my serve, I was just really focusing to stay really composed in my service games, and just to wait for my opportunities in return games," Linette added. On the other hand, Karolina Pliskova extended her head-to-head dominance over Zhang Shuai to advance to her 11th career Grand Slam quarterfinal. The Czech moved to 8-0 versus Zhang with her victory against her in just 55 minutes, and she advanced to the Australian Open's final eight for the fourth time. The former No. 1 and No. 30 seed Zhang, who was also a past quarterfinalist at the Australian Open, was defeated after coming back from 4-2 down in the second set. (ANI)
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