Since the dawn of Open tennis in 1968, a combined total of 51 men and women have known the singular feeling of standing alone at the end of the US Open fortnight. Fifty years, 51 champions.
Ask any of those 51 and they’ll tell you—it takes so much more than talent to win here. You need the whole package: intelligence, desire, stamina, courage. You need to own every shot in the book, and when that’s not enough, you need to be ready to write a new chapter or two. Indeed, the courts of the US Open are tennis’ ultimate proving grounds. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
Twelve former champions are in the field at the 2019 US Open, which figures to make adding to the total of 51 that much more difficult. But there are a number of players with the talent and tenacity to make the difficult disappear; a group which just may have the stuff to claim tennis’ toughest title. As we look forward to the 2019 US Open, USOpen.org takes a closer look at some of those players, asking the question: “Who’s 52?”
In this installment: Karolina Pliskova
Karolina Pliskova is one of the best—if not the best—pure ball striker in women’s tennis. The 27-year-old Czech owns ground strokes that are hard, flat and penetrating, and possesses the ability to throttle winners off both wings. And her serve ranks among the top tier in women’s tennis.
Unfortunately, that is not a game built for clay-court achievement. Unsurprisingly, Pliskova has an 11-8 record at Roland Garros, a semifinal showing in 2017 the lone bright spot among a series of early-round knockouts.
Neither does grass particularly suit the 6-foot-1 Pliskova, who, despite owning a big serve, sometimes struggles with the low and unpredictable bounces of a grass court. Although she does own three career grass-court titles, her record at Wimbledon is a meager 11-8 and she has never advanced past the fourth round in London, losing a heartbreaker to Karolina Muchova at that stage this summer.
The good news: Pliskova’s game is tailor-made for hard courts, making her a perennial title contender at the US Open and, perhaps, a prime contender to become the Open's 52nd singles champion.
The numbers bear this out. Her career mark at Flushing Meadows is now 16-6, and on the hard courts of the Australian Open, she’s 18-7. In her last six appearances at a hard-court major (three each at the Australian Open and US Open), her worst showing is the quarterfinals. And her run to the 2016 US Open final featured victories over both Serena Williams and Venus Williams, culminating in a hard-fought 6-3, 4-6, 6-4 loss to Angelique Kerber that could have very easily gone the other way.
Away from the Slams, Pliskova has won nine career hard-court titles, including the US Open Series event in Cincinnati in 2016, Tokyo in 2018, and the Australian Open tune-up event in Brisbane in both 2017 and earlier this year.
She also enters the summer hard-court circuit playing good ball. Pliskova has won three titles this year and currently sits at No. 3 in the world, well within striking distance of regaining the world No. 1 ranking she first captured in July 2017.
The women’s game is as unsettled as it has been in years. The No. 1 ranking has been traded early and often over the last few years, with nine different women winning the last 11 majors (only defending US Open champ Naomi Osaka and reigning Wimbledon winner Simona Halep have two in that span) and no woman having won two in a calendar year in 2017 or 2018.
There is a good chance that trend of sharing the wealth will hold once again in 2019, and a very real possibility that Pliskova will be the reason.
To read more from this series, visit our "Who's 52?" landing page.
