Serena falls to Pliskova in Aussie Open quarters

Karolina Pliskova says her “mind was in the locker room” when she was down 5-1 in the third set of her Australian Open quarterfinal against 23-time major winner Serena Williams.

In one of the most stunning comebacks at the Australian Open, the seventh-seeded Pliskova saved four match points as she rallied to win the last six games to clinch a 6-4, 4-6, 7-5 victory and a semifinal spot against U.S. Open champion Naomi Osaka.

“I didn’t have too many chances in the third set. I was a little bit too passive. Obviously mentally down,” Pliskova said. “So I just said, ‘Let’s try this game, on 5-2, maybe I’m going to have couple of chances.’

“She got a bit shaky at the end, so I took my chances, and I won.”

Pliskova’s win over the seven-time Australian Open titlist means there’ll be a first-time women’s champion at Melbourne Park this year.

In the other semifinal, two-time Wimbledon winner Petra Kvitova will play Danielle Collins, who had never won a Grand Slam match before this tournament. Kvitova’s best previous run at Melbourne was to the semifinals in 2012.

MELBOURNE, Australia — Rafael Nadal is back to feeling healthy. Probably not a coincidence that he’s back in the Australian Open semifinals.

Playing his familiar brand of court-covering, ball-bashing, opponent-frustrating tennis, Nadal claimed 20 of his first 23 service points and saved the only two break chances he faced, ending American Frances Tiafoe’s best Grand Slam run with a dominating 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 victory Tuesday night.

“I feel lucky to be where I am after all the things I went through,” said Nadal, who quit during his quarterfinal at Melbourne Park a year ago because of a right leg problem, again during his semifinal at the U.S. Open in September because of a painful right knee, and then had offseason surgery on his right ankle.

“Not easy situations,” he said, summing it up.

Nadal, 32, reached his 30th major semifinal and prevented Tiafoe from getting to his first, two days after he turned 21.

“I knew he was going to bring crazy intensity. I knew the ball was going to be jumping. I knew if he got hold of a forehand, it was going to be barbecued chicken,” Tiafoe said. “But point in, point out, I’ve never seen someone so locked in.”

The two hadn’t played each other before, though they did practice together at Roland Garros back in 2014, when Tiafoe was a teen in the junior competition.

Entering this year’s Australian Open, the 39th-ranked Tiafoe had never been past the third round at a major. But he knocked off two-time Slam runner-up Kevin Anderson and 20th-seeded Grigor Dimitrov on the way to the quarterfinals, drawing plenty of attention for his play – and his bare-chested, biceps-slapping celebrations inspired by LeBron James.

As usual, Tiafoe was animated and talkative Tuesday. He lamented missed shots with a self-admonishing “Oh, Frances!” He marked good ones with a shout of “Let’s go!”

But it all came to a screeching halt against Nadal, a 17-time major champion.

Tiafoe, who is from Maryland, was broken the initial time he served in each set, which was all Nadal needed, given how well he handled his own service games. He’s been reluctant to go into detail about a recent tweak he made to his serve, saying it’s “nothing drastic, nothing dramatic.”

He spoke after Tuesday’s win about going for winners on his first forehand following a serve, something he called “very important … at this stage of my career.”

Whatever he’s doing is working. And how. Nadal has won every set he’s played in the tournament, the first time he’s done that en route to the semifinals in Australia since 2009, the only time he won the championship.

“I am playing well,” he said. “I did a lot of things well during the whole week and a half.”

Now Nadal goes up against another opponent much younger than he is, 20-year-old Stefanos Tsitsipas, who upset Roger Federer in the fourth round.

The 14th-seeded Tsitsipas became the first player from Greece to earn a semifinal berth at a major, beating No. 22 Roberto Bautista Agut 7-5, 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (2) earlier Tuesday.

“It’s going to be interesting,” Tsitsipas said about his matchup against Nadal. “I feel all right with my game. I feel like I can do something good against him.”

Asked about all of these kids trying to elbow their way to the top of tennis, Nadal smiled and said: “They can wait a little bit.”

MELBOURNE, Australia — Petra Kvitova watched the Australian Open from a distance two years ago, a month after she was injured in a violent home invasion.

Then she lost in the first round last year, and conceded she hadn’t returned to a standard that earned her two Grand Slam titles at Wimbledon.

Until now, that is. So she knew the question was coming, perhaps overdue. Still, after her 6-1, 6-4 win over Ash Barty on Tuesday night, the question in an on-court interview reduced her to tears.

She was asked if she’d ever doubted, ever lost belief that she’d be back in this moment . She had just qualified for her first major semifinal since her run to the 2014 Wimbledon title. There was barely a dry eye in the arena.

As she paused to take in a breath and wipe away tears, the encouragement and cheers from the crowd intensified and reached a crescendo after almost 20 seconds to allow Kvitova to respond to Jim Courier’s question.

“Thank you guys. Um, no, really,” she said. “I didn’t really imagine to me playing on this great stadium and play with the best.”

Later she explained the tears were “a mix of emotions of everything I’ve been through.”

“Sometimes I’m not really recognizing anything from the past,” she said. “But when Jim asked that, it wasn’t really easy for me to kind of see myself being in a semifinal after everything.”

Since her return to the majors at the French Open in 2017, she has had two first-round exits, two second-round losess, two in the third. The highlight was a run to the 2017 U.S. Open quarterfinals.

Now she’s on a 10-match winning run, having also beaten Barty for the title in Sydney in the week leading up to the Australian Open, and feeling like she’s back in the big time.

“For sure. I’m calling it my `second career.’ So it’s the first semifinal of the `second career,”‘ Kvitova said. “But, yeah, it took me a while, for sure. I never really played so well on the Grand Slams, so I’m happy this time it’s different. I’m really enjoying it.”

And she really is. Her five wins have been in straight sets in an average time of about 1 hour, 6 minutes.

The difference is fewer nerves, more job satisfaction and more freedom.

“I’m seeing life a little bit differently compared with before. I know it’s just the sport, it’s just the tennis,” she said. “Always when you’re doing something, you want to do best. Of course, losing, it hurts a lot because you are doing everything for it.

“On the other hand … I’m always looking back and see what I achieved from the time (before the violent attack). It’s always both sides. But in the end, always the life wins.”

She’ll play Danielle Collins next, and is one of the few people who entered the tournament who could have predicted the American’s run so far.

Collins has a 5-5 career record in Grand Slam matches. It was 0-5 when she got to Melbourne this month. She has taken out three seeded players, including a 6-0, 6-2 win over three-time major champion Angelique Kerber in the fourth round.

In the quarterfinals, she came back to overpower Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 2-6, 7-5, 6-1 – conceding only three points in the third as she raced to a 5-0 lead.

Collins took Kvitova to three long sets at the Brisbane International, her first match of the season. So Kvitova, who like Kerber is left-handed, is wary.

“I won it, but it was over three hours,” Kvitova said of her semifinal rival. “She’s very fearless and she’s playing very, very aggressive.”

Collins said she had followed Kvitova’s career, and admired the 28-year-old Czech player, but was ready to make her win No. 6 in her hot streak.

“She’s an incredible champion, has gone through a lot,” Collins said. “We had a really great battle a couple weeks ago, one of the best matches I’ve played. I didn’t even win that match. So very familiar with her. Looking forward to the next match.”

Kvitova recalled Collins having a chance to serve out that match in Brisbane, and said she would need to be better to win again.

But on second thought, she said: “It’s a semifinal, so, who cares?”

“I always wanted to come back and play on the highest level, compete with the best, play the Grand Slams, actually be very deep in the Grand Slam, which is happening,” Kvitova said of her second-time-around run to the semifinals. “Yeah, it just took me a bit to the tears, but it was happy tears, for sure.”