On Saturday, the No. 2-seeded Kerber trailed by a break at 3-1 in the third set before coming back against Pliskova, a 24-year-old Czech who was seeded 10th and hadn’t been past the third round at a major until this tournament.
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It’s the 28-year-old German’s second grand slam title victory following her Australian Open triumph earlier this year and she will officially overtake Serena Williams at world No.1 on Monday.
Kerber, who beat twice Wimbledon victor Petra Kvitova in the fourth round and last year’s Open runner-up Roberta Vinci in the quarters before eliminating former world number one Caroline Wozniacki in the semis, is now focusing on a second slam title. She averaged 109 miles per hour on her first serves Thursday faster than the younger Williams, known for the best serve in the women’s game and leads the tour in aces this year.
Angelique Kerber poses with the trophy after her match against Karolina Pliskova on day thirteen of the 2016 US Open tennis tournament at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Centre, in NY, on September 10, 2016.
For Kerber, she plays knowing that she is the new No. 1 player in the world when the rankings come out on Monday, displacing Serena Williams after 186 straight weeks.
“Everything started here in 2011, and now I’m here in 2016 and I’m standing with the trophy, second grand slam trophy, and it means so much to me”.
“Obviously the match with Venus helped me, not only with the game, but also with the crowd”, said Pliskova, who is only the third woman to beat Serena and Venus Williams at the same US Open. Only the most learned tennis intellectuals knew all that much about Pliskova as of August 15, when she began the tour stop in Cincinnati.
Pliskova had never gone past the third round of a major tournament before but after beating Kerber to win the title in Cincinnati last month, she pushed her opponent all the way again.
Pliskova said that the fact Kerber is left-handed was also a key factor in the way the final played out.
“I was trying to change this and I think I improve very well”, Kerber said. The Danish player posed no threat to Kerber, who sailed through with a 6-4, 6-3 win.
“Being number one of course now everybody will try to beat me and have nothing to lose”.
Her rise into the final also included wins over seeded players Venus Williams and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. “When I was going down the line, I knew I had to risk a little bit because this is the only chance I can get”.
Kerber takes home the winners’ cheque for 3.5million U.S. dollars and becomes the first woman, other than Williams, to win two grand slams in a year since Justine Henin in 2007. “I have been in Toronto or Montreal or Cincinnati where I play Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday”.
“But I was always practicing and working hard to be number one”.
Serena Williams lost her No. 1 ranking at the U.S. Open Thursday. “I made a lot of errors”.
Reached her first WTA Premier-level final at the 2015 Apia International Sydney before losing to compatriot Petra Kvitova in two tie-breaking sets, a run of form that lifted her into the world’s top 20 for the first time.
It is only the fourth time she has ever competed at the US Open and the second time that she had made it past the first round of the tournament. In the third set she fought off a match point then broke Wiliams’ serve on the way to forcing the tiebreak that she won.
However, Pliskova found plenty of joy at the net in the second, mixing up her game to keep Kerber guessing with advances to the tape.
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And because she’s beaten Kerber before, and recently, she’s prepared for that, too. “It was always a dream to, you know, get a title, get to the semifinal, get to the final”.
