Ashleigh Barty became the first world No. 1 to reach Wimbledon Championships final in five years after she defeated 2018 champion Angelique Kerber 6-3, 7-6(3) in the semi-finals yesterday.<\/p>\n
In the final, she will take on Czech Republic’s Karolina Pliskova, who overcame Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus in three sets, coming back from a first-set loss to win 5-7, 6-4,6-4 in nearly two hours.<\/p>\n
Ashleigh, who will lead the Australian tennis contingent at the Tokyo Olympics this month, took an hour and 26 minutes to prevail over the German opponent. She came back from a break down at 5-3 in the second set to seal the win.<\/p>\n
The Aussie committed more double faults \u2013 4 against 3 \u2013 but it was her power-packed game and high percentage of wins on the first service that carried her through.<\/p>\n
She fired eight aces against none by Angelique and won 88 per cent of points on the first serve. Ashleigh also converted two of the five break-points.<\/p>\n
This is Ashleigh’s best finish at Wimbledon. She has won only one Grand Slam singles title before \u2013 the 2019 French Open.<\/p>\n
The other semi-final was a shootout between two powerful hitters and Karolina overcame Aryna with some precise play in the second and third sets. The Czech star missed a lot of chances in the first set loss. She tightened her game in the second and third to capitalise on the opportunities.<\/p>\n
She broke her rival’s serve at crucial points and sealed the victory. But it was a tough encounter and could have gone against her if she had not kept her nerves.<\/p>\n
“It’s amazing to be in the final. It’s an incredible achievement. It was an amazing match from both of us. I had so many chances in the first set and got a bit frustrated, but she was serving unbelievable. A lot of credit to her, but super happy that I managed to find the way to win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ashleigh Barty became the first world No. 1 to reach Wimbledon Championships final in five years after she defeated 2018 champion Angelique Kerber 6-3, 7-6(3) in the semi-finals yesterday. In the final, she will take on Czech Republic’s Karolina Pliskova, who overcame Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus in three sets, coming back from a first-set loss […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8775,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8773\/revisions\/8775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}