In what will go down as a Wimbledon classic, Karolina Muchova edged Coco Gauff 6-2, 1-6, 7-6 (10) on Thursday to advance to her first final at the All England Club and second Grand Slam final of her career.<\/p>\n
Muchova let a 6-3 lead get away in the deciding tiebreaker, then saved a match point down 9-8.<\/p>\n
Four points later, she clinched arguably the biggest win of her WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz career with a backhand down that line that Gauff hit into the net.<\/p>\n
“Honestly, during that tiebreak, it was like kind of [a] roller coaster as well, emotionally, for me,” Muchova told reporters after the match. “One point I felt good, I hit a nice winner, and then I did, like, a terrible mistake. In my head [I] was just like, I have to keep hitting.<\/p>\n
“I was telling myself if I’m going to lose this, I want to lose on my own terms. My terms is going forward, playing aggressive, going to the net.”<\/p>\n
It was Muchova’s second consecutive win over Gauff this season, after losing to her in their first six meetings. The World No. 9 also snapped Gauff’s streak of four consecutive wins in three-setters.<\/p>\n
Muchova will play Linda Noskova, a first-time Grand Slam finalist, for the title on Saturday. Noskova defeated Marta Kostyuk 6-4, 6-4 in the second semifinal on Thursday.<\/p>\n
It will be the first all-Czech final in Grand Slam history.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Muchova, it will be her second Grand Slam final after making the Roland Garros title match in 2023. She lost that match to Iga Swiatek in three sets.<\/p>\n
“It’s been a while,” Muchova said of that first major final experience. “It’s been three years. I don’t really know what I was doing [on] a day off. But I will just try to do the same [that] I’ve been doing here these two weeks. Do the kind of same ritual, same stuff.<\/p>\n
“Hit for 30 minutes tomorrow, try to keep it chill, recover as best as I can, then have that last match on Saturday.”<\/p>\n
Muchova and Noskova have played just once before, at last year’s US Open. Muchova came from a set down in that match to win 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In what will go down as a Wimbledon classic, Karolina Muchova edged Coco Gauff 6-2, 1-6, 7-6 (10)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105,4277],"class_list":["post-533509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}