Karolina Pliskova bashes WTA for a “Super tough, unfair and a bad decision” that’s worse than Wimbledon’s ban
Karolina Pliskova
World No. 8 Karolina Pliskova had to fight back in her first round at the 2022 French Open to advance into the second round. Up against Tessah Andrianjafitrimo, Pliskova won the match 2-6, 6-3, 6-1 to reach the second round for the 8th time in her 12th appearance at the Grand Slam.
Post her win over Tessah, Pliskova was questioned about her thoughts on the recent decision by the WTA to dock all ranking points from the 2022 Wimbledon Championships in retaliation for the Grand Slam’s decision to not allow Russian and Belarusian players to participate in this year’s event in the All-England Club. With the decision by WTA, all ranking points won in the 2021 edition will be deducted and irrespective of the players’ finish in the Grand Slam, they won’t receive any points.
For Pliskova, it is a big hit as she was the runner-up in the last year’s Wimbledon losing to Ash Barty in the finals. As a result, she will be seeing a 1200 point deduction from her tally which will barely keep her in the Top-15. Pliskova will drop the most points on the women’s side since Barty has retired and the former World No. 1 chuckled during the press conference when asked about her views on this.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s quite bad, especially for me because of course there is Barty but I don’t think she’s really going to miss the points. But, yeah, it is what it is. I think it’s super tough and unfair and a bad decision, that’s what I think. But I suppose there’s not much you can do about it. I still want to go and compete there, that’s for sure because I’m not playing because of the points, not even because of the money. I just, of course, I want to win and I want to succeed and I want to maybe get the trophy because I was quite close last year.
“But that doesn’t change the thinking that I think it’s completely wrong the decision, not even the one from Wimbledon, I think more the one from WTA. But as a player we had some calls, there have been like so many discussions about this. I think that it’s like super tough to change the decision because this becomes it’s about politics. So I think players are too, not too small, but like the voice is not that big, I think, in this kind of situation to change something,” said Pliskova during her press conference.
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Pliskova further talked that the players don’t have enough unity, something that even Novak Djokovic mentioned during his press conference, which allows the organisations to make the decisions easily and everyone suffers because of it. She also spoke about the difference of opinion everyone had on whether the points should be deducted and if deducted how many should be deducted.
“But I don’t know. I don’t really speak to many players, don’t know the opinion. I think many players, they also wanted to keep maybe the points from last year. But of course, it’s different if you, like, losing 1,000 points like me and if you lost in the first round, you don’t really care. would also not care that much if I lost in the first round to have zero. You know, it’s a completely different situation.
“So that’s why also it depends like every player had a different idea about it. That’s why I think it’s tough because, look, we had a group of WhatsApp of chat like top 10 players and not even these 10 girls we could not agree on the same thing. So I mean, you know, then it’s difficult to make a decision if, like, not even the players are even. And on one side, I mean, like some girls were for no points, some were for 50 percent, to keep just 50 percent from last year, some were for like all the points. So it is what it is,” added Pliskova.
Karolina will now take on Leolia Jeanjean in what will be the first-ever meeting between the two players. Leolia is ranked 227th in the world and comes into the second round with a straight-set win over Nuria Parrizas-Dias.
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Sarthak Shitole
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