Barty, the No. 1 seed in the women’s singles draw, had won the first set comfortably but fell to the 25th-seeded Karolina Muchova.
The top-seeded Ashleigh Barty, who represented her country’s best chance for a homegrown Australian Open champion, lost in the quarterfinals on Wednesday, falling 1-6, 6-3, 6-2 to the 25th-seeded Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic.
Barty began the match in dominant form, leading Muchova by a set and a break at 6-1, 2-0. From there, however, Barty became inconsistent. At 2-1, she hit four unforced errors to drop her serve and level the second set. She finished with 19 unforced errors in the second set, after having only six in the first.
As Barty faltered, Muchova played with increasing poise and patience, exemplified by one rally in the second set in which she needed to hit four overhead smashes before Barty finally made an error.
Muchova, one of the few players who can match Barty’s versatility, was playing in her first Grand Slam quarterfinal.
Barty did not travel internationally to rejoin the WTA Tour when it resumed from its pandemic pause last year, but retained her No. 1 ranking because of the tour largely freezing its ranking system so her points from winning the French Open and WTA finals in 2019 did not expire.
Barty had won a tournament, the Yarra Valley Classic, held in Melbourne the week before the Australian Open began. She struggled with a left leg injury early in the tournament that forced her to withdraw from the doubles draw to reduce her workload, but she had shown few ill effects from it in the second week of the tournament.
Muchova’s victory guarantees that there will be a player ranked outside the top 20 in the final. Muchova will face an American, either the 22nd-seeded Jennifer Brady or the unseeded Jessica Pegula, in the semifinals.
No Australian woman has won the Australian Open singles title since Chris O’Neil in 1978.
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February 17, 2021 at 09:15AM
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