LINZ, Austria — Karolina Muchova was in full flow as she opened her Upper Austria Ladies Linz campaign with a 6-2, 6-3 second-round win over Spain’s Sara Sorribes Tormo.
“I feel like the tournament is nearly over and I just played my first round,” said Muchova, who had a first-round bye in Linz. “I’m very pleased.”
The 19th-ranked Czech was playing her first match since falling to Naomi Osaka in the second round of the Australian Open.
The Czech has become renowned for her crowd-pleasing hot shots over the past few seasons, which have seen her deliver multiple deep runs on the big stage: her first Grand Slam final at Roland Garros 2023, a pair of US Open semifinals in 2023 and 2024, and two WTA 1000 finals at Cincinnati 2023 and Beijing 2024.
But frequent injury breaks have also meant that Muchova’s title drought now stretches back over half a decade since lifting her only Hologic WTA Tour trophy at Seoul 2019. As the No.1 seed in Linz this week, the 28-year-old is bidding to snap it by taking her first WTA 500 title.
It wasn’t a simple task for 28-year-old Muchova, who had lost both of her previous meetings against her foe. But she was all over the net and comfortable in the indoor hard court setting, that much was clear.
Muchova hit 36 winners to just seven for Sorribes Tormo, and converted four of eight break points to win easily, in 86 minutes.
A solid win over a tricky opponent was an encouraging start. Sorribes Tormo had beaten Muchova in both of their previous meetings, but Muchova did not allow the Spaniard to turn this encounter into a war of attrition.
Swarming the net whenever possible and getting big first strikes in early, Muchova tallied 36 winners — including five aces — to 29 unforced errors.
Sorribes Tormo’s winner total was a mere seven, though the World No.99 showed she could match Muchova’s finesse when she wanted — in particular, two finely angled passing shots had the crowd gasping.
Muchova’s only stumble came towards the end, as she nearly let a 4-1 second-set lead slip amid some careless errors — but she was able to laugh about it after regaining her focus.
“I think you saw some silly shots,” Muchova told Barbara Schett in her on-court interview.
“Sometimes it’s too many options. I’m trying to work on it to pick the right shots. It’s fun, but sometimes … Hopefully no one saw what I just did!”
Elsewhere, Anna Blinkova dealt out the biggest upset of the tournament to date, defeating No.2 seed Elina Svitolina 6-4, 6-4 in 1 hour and 37 minutes.
In a match filled with intense, high-octane baseline exchanges and 12 breaks of serve in total, Svitolina paid the price for landing only 53 per cent of her first serves, and winning just 32 per cent of her second serve points.
Svitolina threatened a comeback when she found a phenomenal forehand winner to break Blinkova as the World No.83 served for the match, but was unable to maintain the same quality in the subsequent game.
The result was Blinkova’s first win over Svitolina in three meetings, and put her into her first tour-level quarter-final since Bad Homburg last June.
Elsewhere, top seed Anna Kalinskaya of Russia had to battle in the second set before eliminating Switzerland’s Simona Waltert 6-2, 7-6 (3) in the Round of 16 at the Singapore Tennis Open.
Kalinskaya, ranked No. 18 in the world, converted 3 of 5 break-point opportunities and saved 4 of 5. Waltert, ranked 179th, had more aces (6-0) and more double faults (5-0).
Sixth-seed Camila Osorio of Colombia rallied from dropping the first set to defeat the Czech Republic’s Dominika Salkova 3-6, 6-2, 6-4. American An Li ousted Russia’s Maria Timofeeva in straight sets, as did Thailand’s Mananchaya Swangkaew over Spain’s Cristina Bucsa.
