Angelique Kerber pushed away any post-match fatigue or tired legs and relished yet another championship.
Kerber bent her knees nearly to the ground all afternoon to dig out an onslaught of powerful ground strokes by Karolina Pliskova, beating the hard-hitting Czech 6-3, 5-7, 6-4 for the Bank of the West Classic title on Sunday.
The left-handed Kerber extended points with her baseline gets on the way to a title in the event she lost in Stanford, California, a year ago to Serena Williams.
Photo: AP
“It’s hard work to get really fit, but at the end it takes over on court,” Kerber said of her fitness, which helps her recover in a hurry.
The fifth-seeded German improved to 4-0 in finals this year, which included edging Pliskova 6-7 (5/7), 6-3, 7-6 (7/4) in a nearly two-and-a-half-hour match for the championship on grass in Birmingham, England, in June, for her first title on that surface.
Sunday’s slugfest went 2 hours, 7 minutes.
Kerber let out a scream and raised her arms in delight when Pliskova’s forehand went into the net on the second match point, completing the 10th break of serve by the German. She earned US$124,000 for her victory.
“She’s just great moving and a great defender, so it was maybe harder than in the last matches for me,” Pliskova said. “That’s why I made maybe more mistakes. She’s always tough to play. She’s one of the fittest girls on the Tour.”
Pliskova, seeded fourth, hit booming first serves from 180kph to 185kph in the first set, but needed an injury timeout to have her right ankle taped late in the second, before she held for 7-5 after seven straight breaks and force a third set.
Pliskova found some better consistency when it mattered most, breaking for 3-2 in the final set. The 23-year-old — whose twin sister Kristyna also plays on the WTA Tour — had missed chances throughout the match to that point, such as jumping out to 40-0 to start the match, before losing the opening, 16-point game.
She had chances to close out points at the net, but Kerber’s pinpoint passing shots regularly caught Pliskova in no-man’s-land, about a step further back from the net than she needed to be.
Pliskova committed 21 unforced errors in the first set to put herself in a hole, to just one by the steady Kerber.
Pliskova took home US$66,100 as runner-up. She finished with 52 unforced errors and 52 winners, while the 27-year-old Kerber had 14 unforced errors in all.
It was hardly a pretty display of serving with double faults to end games in a match featuring 18 breaks of serve.
“That’s probably for me the worst thing,” Pliskova said. “It’s my best shot. I think that’s the point, why I lost today.”
Kerber captured her seventh career singles title playing in her fourth final of the season. She lost in Stanford last year to Williams 7-6 (7/1), 6-3. The world No. 1 withdrew from the event last week because of an elbow injury.
Kerber learned plenty from a first-set collapse a year ago. She won five straight games to go up 5-1 and was serving for the first set at 5-2 before Williams saved two set points and went to win five games in a row.
“Of course, it was big motivation for me to win the title here where I lost last year against Serena,” Kerber said.
Kerber, projected to move up the rankings from 14th to 11th, earned her 40th match victory to tie her with Williams (40-1) for the most wins this season.
Pliskova was due to move up to eighth in the WTA Tour rankings.
“I proved that I belong there,” she said.
Top seed Caroline Wozniacki dropped a 6-4, 6-2 result in her opening match, in the second round, on Thursday to Varvara Lepchenko of the US. Pliskova defeated Lepchenko in a straight-sets semi-final win on Saturday.
Pliskova was the first Czech-born woman to reach the final in the event since Martina Navratilova in 1994. Navratilova lost to Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario that year in Oakland, but won the last of her five titles at the tournament in 2003.
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