Insider Notebook: The Final Four
– Strong semifinal slate: The BNP Paribas Open semifinals are set for Friday night: No.1 Serena Williams faces No.3 Agnieszka Radwanska, followed by No.13 seed Victoria Azarenka against No.18 seed Karolina Pliskova.
Is Serena playing better ball in 2016 than 2015? It’s a legitimate question to ask. Setting aside the blemish of losing in the Australian Open final, Serena has offered a far more consistent high-quality level to start this season. In her first big test of the tournament she handled an in-form Simona Halep in the quarterfinals, winning 6-4, 6-3. It’s been business as usual for Serena this year in the desert, with the chaos surrounding her return last year subsiding.
“I feel really good,” Serena said. “I’m hoping to be able to perform in the semifinal. I have been feeling pretty good this whole tournament so far. So I hope that I can be able to continue to feel pretty good.”
– Can Agnieszka Radwanska muster the belief? With her run to yet another semifinal, Radwanska will rise to No.2 on Monday behind Serena. That means Friday night’s match will feature the top two players in the world. But can Radwanska make a match of it?
She is 0-9 against Serena and has won just one set, which came in 2012 in the Wimbledon final. As clever a shot-maker and tactician as she is, Radwanska has yet to be able to solve her Serena riddle.
“I just hope I can really play good tennis that I was playing last few days, and that’s it,” Radwanska said. “You know, goal is to win, but it’s not gonna be easy, that’s for sure.”
Match-ups are just as determinative of results as forehands and backahands and this has been a terrible match-up for the crafty Radwanska. Her off-pace returns rarely bother the American and she has struggled to find a way to keep the ball in awkward positions on the court against Serena. And as we saw at the Australian Open, if Serena’s return game is on Radwanska will struggle mightily to hold. In the semifinals of the Australian Open, Serena raced away with a 6-0, 6-4 win.
“I think it was one of my best matches,” Serena said. “I played pretty well the whole week. I just remember being aggressive and going forward and keeping my errors down, even though in the second set she made a great effort to come back and try to push for a third set. But I was able to get back in there and close it out. So it was a good match. Even though the scoreline was one way, it was definitely a good match.”
– Can Victoria Azarenka get revenge? Flash back a year ago to the first round of the Brisbane International. Azarenka and Pliskova, then ranked No.23, slugged it out for over three hours before Pliskova saved match point and won 4-6, 7-6(7), 6-4. It was one of the small handful of “Sliding Doors” moments for Azarenka in 2015. How different would each player’s respective season have been if the result was reversed? Pliskova would eventually storm up the rankings and into the Top 10, while Azarenka continued to struggle.
“She played really well,” Azarenka said after her 6-0, 6-0 win over an injured Magdalena Rybarikova. “I think I didn’t play bad, especially after a long break coming back. It was a long match, I remember. I remember I had a lot of opportunities. Hopefully tomorrow when I create those opportunities I can convert them.”
Said Pliskova: “I saw it few times already because I thought it was a really good match. I was down match point so I almost lost this match, but in the end I won. Was a big fight and big match, and especially was the first match of the season.
“So it was a big thing for me, big win, so I will remember this one. I just hope if I play her I play the same level as I played.”
A win for Pliskova would put her into the biggest final of her career so far, while Azarenka is aiming to get back into the final of a Premier Mandatory for the first time since 2012.
– Azarenka’s confidence is building: The former No.1 has lost just one match in 2016 and tallied her second double-bagel win of the season – she’s also dished out six bagel sets this year. So does Vika have the swagger of a woman who’s had a near-flawless start to the season?
“I feel that the most important thing for me right now is feeling that I’m improving from match to match and feeling healthy that knowing that when I go out there I give myself the best opportunity to win, which wasn’t the case last two years,” Azarenka said.
“If you look at my matches last year I didn’t feel like any matches that I lost I was outplayed. In all the matches I had chances and all the matches I could have won those matches, I think. So I don’t know. I think confidence for me this year comes from being very well prepared and feeling healthy.”
– Kasatkina rising fast: The WTA Insider team has been big on Daria Kasatkina since her US Open run last fall but no one could expect the results she’s tallied over the last six months. The 18-year-old ran out of gas against Pliskova but she’ll make her Top 40 debut on Monday.
Is she surprised by her own success rate? “A little bit, yeah,” she said with a laugh. “Now I’m top 40. Last year I was 340. Yeah, it was pretty fast.”
All photos courtesy of Getty Images.