Unique cheering for Halep, busy days for stringers
11th August 2020
On Tuesday, August 11, both suspended matches and scheduled matches of the first round of the main singles competition took place in the premises of TK Sparta Praha complex. Tournament’s number one seeded Simona Halep manage to defeat Polona Hercog from Slovenia in three sets. The successful day also experienced Czech players as Barbora Krejčíková and Kristýna Plíšková moved into the second round. On the other hand, young Linda Fruhvirtova from the Czech Republic, who had a debut in the WTA circuit, was not that lucky as she lost to Plíšková. Neither was Barbora Strýcová who lost to Sara Sorribes Tormo in two sets.
Unfortunately, Prague Open 2020 lost one of the participants in the main competition, the French tennis player Fiona Ferro, the recent winner of the WTA tournament in Palermo, due to an injured rib. She arrived in Prague as planned but had to, unfortunately, withdraw in the last minutes. Nevertheless, she showed her personality and did a big gesture when she personally apologized to the director of the tournament David Trunda.
In addition to the busy courts from the early mornings until late evenings, the local gym is widely used by the players. As we have spotted, one of the daily users are for example Spanish players or Polona Hercog from Slovenia who played a tough and close match against Simona Halep today. Even though she did not manage to defeat world number 2 Simona Halep in the first round, she definitely did not make it easy for her in the 2,5 hours long battle on the centre court.
Despite the fact that the tournament is without any spectators, Halep did not play her first match in Prague alone. In addition to the members of her team, an unexpected backdrop was also created by her opponents, who appreciated the excellent rallies, exchanges, and the winning balls of the Romanian with loud cheering. This is not usually the case in tournaments, especially at the WTA level, the more sympathetic this scenery sounds in these hard times.
And if you are curious which player has had to get their rackets restrung the most, we did some research for you! Our current leaders are Tamara Korpatsch from Germany and Lesia Tsurenko from Ukraine, who both are on a number 16! Polona Hercog is not doing bad either as she is just 1 racket behind them. The rest of the players have had to get restrung of four to five rackets in average.
Former Czech tennis player Lucie Šafářová introduced herself as a coach of Anastasia Pavljucenkova from Russia for the first time. To get her coaching duties and responsibilities, her partner, Czech hockey player Tomáš Plekanec, arrived at the TK Sparta Praha complex to babysit their daughter Leontynka. It was a busy day for Šafářová as she also took on the role of an online guide and she walked the spectators through the bowels of the TK Sparta Prague complex with a camera behind her back and she at least showed the fans from a distance every single corner of the complex which the spectators do not normally see.
