Anett Kontaveit has become an interesting phenomenon in 2021 as well as the last major event of women's tennis in the world this year, the WTA Finals. The Estonian tennis player defeated the No. 3 seed, Karolina Pliskova, 6-4, 6-0 in the Teotihuacan group of WTA Finals 2021, extending his winning streak to 12 consecutive matches.
This victory also means Kontaveit becoming the first player at the tournament in Guadalajara (Mexico) to reach the semi-finals when she secured the group stage in 1 of the top 2 positions.
Kontaveit entered this match in very good form with a series of 11 consecutive wins - also the best series of matches in her career. That run of victories has seen the 25-year-old win titles in Moscow and Cluj-Napoca, as well as a first WTA Finals group stage win over reigning champions Roland Garros and Barbora Krejcikova.
It is worth mentioning that, in his first participation, Kontaveit was the lowest placed among the 8 players in the singles event (8th in the world). Moreover, she entered this match when the head-to-head score against Pliskova was 0-3.
But as has happened many times in the last time this year, Kontaveit was the one to say the last word, defeating Pliskova for the first time after 4 meetings. Kontaveit even took only 57 minutes to win the second victory this week, with a very high efficiency in the first pass (24/29 - 83%) and having 6 points ace. This season, Kontaveit won 40 matches and lost 2 when winning the first set.
Meanwhile, despite being present at the WTA Finals for the fifth consecutive time, Pliskova has been unable to gain experience. The most obvious thing about the 29-year-old tennis player's decline in form is that he cannot score even one of the 3 break points (all in one game). Pliskova leads this year's Tour system in direct serve, but in this match, she only has 4 ace points and only won 63% of the first serve points.
This defeat also pushed the No. 3 seed of the tournament down to 3rd place in the Teotihuacan table because in the following match, Gabine Muguruza came back to beat another Czech Republic player, Barbosa Krejcikova. After falling 6-2 in the first set, the Spaniard played with concentration, in the next 2 sets (6-3, 6-4) to lower the No. 2 seed after 2 hours and 10 minutes.
