Linda Fruhvirt unexpectedly defeated Svitolina! What other players will be playing in Birmingham?

The Birmingham tournament traditionally comes two weeks before Wimbledon. Thanks to Petra Kvitova, the Czech colours have already triumphed here twice. On Monday, Linda Fruhvitova gave a great performance. How did her match go and which Czechs will still play at the popular tennis event?

The Birmingham tournament belongs to the WTA 250 category and is a very popular tennis event in its traditional date. This year’s edition will also feature Venus Williams thanks to a wild card. The legendary American will be playing only her second tournament of the calendar year. The first one in Auckland in January saw her finish in the second round.

However, the Czech Republic’s representative is the tournament’s number one. Barbora Krejčíková will try to return to her results at the beginning of the year, when she played the eighth round of the Australian Open and won the Masters in Dubai.

Linda Fruhvirtova’s excellent start

Linda Fruhvirt also put in a top-notch performance at the start of the year at the Australian Open. She too played in the eighth round at the first Grand Slam of the season. The clay part of the season didn’t go as she had hoped, but at eighteen she has plenty of time for everything.

She had a great start to the grass season on Monday. The Czech tennis player was the underdog in her opening match. She met the Ukrainian Svitolina. But the Czech was the better tennis player from the first ball. She won the opening serve of the Ukrainian with a clean game and soon led 3:0. She did not lose her promising lead and was happy to win the first set 6: 2.

The second set flew by at lightning speed in the UK’s second largest city. Fruhvirt won it smoothly 6: 0 and after a month she is happy to win a competitive match. The Prague-born player had a great first serve in the match. She won more than 70% of her frames after that.

In the next round she will play the American Pera, who got past Maria Bouzkova in the first round. The left-handed American is almost twenty places higher on the rankings than Linda Fruhvirt.

Other Czechs in the tournament

In addition to the aforementioned Barbora Krejcikova and the already eliminated Maria Bouzkova, Barbora Strýcová and Linda Nosková will also play on the grass courts in Birmigham. The more experienced Strýcová will be playing her first match since the tournament in Rome. Here in Birmigham, she is still waiting for her qualifying opponent.

Linda Noskova is preparing for tournament runner-up Ostapenko. The 18-year-old tennis player from Wallachia will have a tough debut on grass. The Latvian Ostapenko has much more experience with grass, she played the final in Eastbourne last year and even triumphed in the same place the year before.

Source: WTA, Tennisexplorer