2017 Australian Open WTA SF: Mirjana Lucic-Baroni v Serena Williams

Who will win?

  • Serena in 2

    Votes: 11 73.3%

  • Serena in 3

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Lucic-Baroni in 2

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Lucic-Baroni in 3

    Votes: 4 26.7%
  • Total voters
    15
  • Poll closed .
Aussie Darcy

Aussie Darcy

Bionic Poster
A big SF match up.
We have the inspiring Lucic-Baroni who has had a fairytale run in Melbourne. She faces one of the GOAT's of tennis in Serena Williams.

Lucic-Baroni has had a great run where she's defeated Radwanska and Pliskova. Serena has done well by defeating good players like Bencic, Safarova, Strycova and Konta.

Lucic-Baroni into her first slam semifinal since Wimbledon 1999 where she played a slam champion with 22 slams... Steffi Graf.
Here she is in 2017 facing another 22x slam champion by the name of Serena Williams.

So who will win the SF and make the Australian Open final?
 
The GOAT in 2 sets.

MLB's last match had her broken several times. I don't see Serena squandering it like Pliskova did. Of course, this is assuming the Serena against Konta shows up today, too.
 
Not reasonable not to strongly favor Serena, especially if she plays like she did yesterday. She's the better player of the two, and she can maintain her level more consistently. MLB's injured leg is a real aggravating factor as well.

MLB does have that big power game, but she would nonetheless have to play her heart out, and through the pain at that. It's possible, but not likely.
 
Go Baroni, Serena can still win Slams.....she can break Steffi and Court later.

Serena has not served well the last 2-3 matches....maybe Baroni can capitalize.
 
kishnabe said:
Go Baroni, Serena can still win Slams.....she can break Steffi and Court later.

Serena has not served well the last 2-3 matches....maybe Baroni can capitalize.
Click to expand...

Mirjana has an injury, it's going to be hard to capitalize.

I'd like to see her go through but my concern is that with that poor leg, and one match on it (and I assume this would be a really tough and tight match) she'd be a virtual walkover in the final. Just don't see how she could recover in time.

I wish she'd quit doubles after the Sakkari match.
 
I think is the 1st AO match since the 2015 final when Serena actually has a serve.

Last year was soooo bad,underpaced,barely hitting aces with it and no consistency at all.
One of the reasons why she couldn't win it.

Baroni looks very bad out there and Serena really solid.This was been a rather weak draw admittedly
 
InsideOut900 said:
I think is the 1st AO match since the 2015 final when Serena actually has a serve.

Last year was soooo bad,underpaced,barely hitting aces with it and no consistency at all.
One of the reasons why she couldn't win it.

Baroni looks very bad out there and Serena really solid.This was been a rather weak draw admittedly
Click to expand...


I like venus alot but you might as well hand serena number 23 now. I just can't see venus beating her.
 
fundrazer said:
Stupid MTO against Pliskova robbed us of a potentially interesting match. Goes down so meekly and now is taking a fricking selfie after losing. lmao what a joke.
Click to expand...

Wow. She really did that? She should be ashamed of her performance. How about winning more than 3 games.
 
StanTheMan said:
jesus this year's women's tournament has been simply garbage.
Click to expand...

This match, yes. Coco v/s Venus wasn't garbage. It was even brilliant for the first set, not so brilliant the remaining two but that's down to Coco's errors, not Venus who continued to play great tennis. lol, most of the tour probably can't come up with some of the forehands Venus produced in this match.
 
Serena WIlliams: "Mirjana is an inspiration and deserves all the credit today. To get so far after all she has been through inspires me and I wanted to give her all the congratulations.

"It is great to see her out here. I was rooting for her through the whole tournament.

Yeah no doubt she was rooting for her-knocking out the 3 & 5 seeds & giving her a walkover into the final.
 
  • Like
Reactions: PDJ
fundrazer said:
Stupid MTO against Pliskova robbed us of a potentially interesting match. Goes down so meekly and now is taking a fricking selfie after losing. lmao what a joke.
Click to expand...

Difference between Serena & the also-rans. You think Serena would say she was happy to lose, or take selfies after losing? Don't like her behaviour at all, but at least losing hurts for her.
 
People who essentially give up on a match because an opponent who has been nursing an injury for several matches (and Lucic-Baroni played doubles in addition to singles, making it to QF in the doubles category) takes an MTO do not need, or particularly deserve, to be in the semis of a GS to face Serena. I won't bother noting how cheeky and hypocritical it is to even get into it given that Pliskova took an MTO herself in the second set after losing the first.

I AM sorry now, however, that Pliskova didn't get this far, just so her fans, who are flying so high off of US Open 2016, could see her get dismissed by today's Serena. A girl who lost a set and was down a double break in the third the moment she played a dangerous floater (after steamrolling WTA 200 in the first two rounds of course), and who was broken by the same "pathetic" MLB 10000 times over the course of the match was gonna give a good match today? Please. Konta got to 5 games, and she's a better mover than Pliskova (and had better serve stats going into the QF).

I'm not going to repost blow-by-blow account of the points played post-MTO, but that final break was absolutely, 100 percent, Pliskova's fault. She hit unforced errors off of returns like a person ready to be done and go home, not a person hungry to take another step towards a maiden slam.

Later she noted (in an otherwise fair appraisal of her performance) that she was really feeling the pressure of being singled out as the favorite to win AO. God forbid if she was no. 1 with a couple of Slams on her resume already. How does Serena survive every day of her life? How did Serena survive her first Slam final, when she was several years younger?

Your sour grapes are sad and do no service to your girl.
 
MatsPhilander said:
Difference between Serena & the also-rans. You think Serena would say she was happy to lose, or take selfies after losing? Don't like her behaviour at all, but at least losing hurts for her.
Click to expand...

The girl's 34. This is her second and last Slam semi, and it felt like sth of a closure, which you'd know about if you knew anything about her. She was absolutely spent emotionally, much of it for reasons having nothing to do with the tennis court itself. She has no reason to be mad, because she was never expected to get this far, because she was never expected to get back to WTA circuit to begin with after years of injury, lack of money and family abuse, and because win or lose, these past two weeks were some of the best of her life.

Next time around you'll surely get a young upstart with ambitions of double-digits slams who's furious to lose a semi.
 
Man of steel said:
This. The fact that she let an MTO get to her shows her mental weakness. Try pulling that shiz with serena and she only destroy you even more
Click to expand...

She didn't pull any shizz anyhow! She had been nursing an injury for freaking days. Pliskova behaved like a person ready to be off the court post-MTO, not to mention that she had spent most of the match either a set, or a break, or a set and a break down. She was running from behind for more or less the entire freaking time. And she'd taken an MTO herself, not to mention.

In short, she was struggling with that same pathetic MLB like no tomorrow but would have taken it to Serena today? Laughable.

Though as I say, seeing her get spanked with approximately 5 or so games to her name might have done wonders for those who hurried to anoint her the new queen post one victory over Serena.
 
skyline said:
The girl's 34. This is her second and last Slam semi, and it felt like sth of a closure, which you'd know about if you knew anything about her. She was absolutely spent emotionally, much of it for reasons having nothing to do with the tennis court itself. She has no reason to be mad, because she was never expected to get this far, because she was never expected to get back to WTA circuit to begin with after years of injury, lack of money and family abuse, and because win or lose, these past two weeks were some of the best of her life.

Next time around you'll surely get a young upstart with ambitions of double-digits slams who's furious to lose a semi.
Click to expand...

Who says it is her last semi? In this era of mediocrity anything is possible. Nah, none of the top women seem to be bothered at losing to Serena over & over, it just seems to be normal for them, most of them never even try doing anything differently. This is the problem with hero worship in any sport-you are playing a myth rather than reality & you cannot walk out there starstruck.
 
MatsPhilander said:
Who says it is her last semi? In this era of mediocrity anything is possible. Nah, none of the top women seem to be bothered at losing to Serena over & over, it just seems to be normal for them, most of them never even try doing anything differently. This is the problem with hero worship in any sport-you are playing a myth rather than reality & you cannot walk out there starstruck.
Click to expand...

It's her last semi. You're talking about a 34 year old who played her first semi at 17 against Graff (Wimbledon, and a great match it was). She was supposed to the Next Big Thing, before her life got derailed big time, in ways that aren't worth talking about right now. She was literally off the WTA circuit for four years, and didn't get to play a single GS match for close to a decade. At this stage, she's missed out on years of crucial player development she can never make up for. It's amazing she's around at all.

She's not gonna become a top 10 presence at this age, and with that kind of history. This was her one moment. And she earned it fair and square, no matter what Pliskova's fans have to say about it.
 
Got to love the Eurosport narrative. The dream final of "knowing exactly what will happen".

Screen_Shot_2017_01_26_at_10_02_01.png


And the MLB saga was very nice while it lasted, but we need to understand that it's secondary and that the main focus is always the records falling and one player winning more and more and more until the end of times. Like Cristiano Ronaldo in football. Who cares if the results are predictable and the tournaments are underwhelming, as long as we're witnessing history in the making at every turn? I really hope Serena wins the CYGS this year, so that while celebrating her greatness and her domination of the game in her mid-thirties we can, in the moments of clarity that interrupt euphoria, also stop and wonder how such an absurdity came to be.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Aussie Darcy
  • Poll Poll
2017 Australian Open WTA Final: Venus Williams v Serena Williams
4 5 6
Replies
276
Views
23K
THUNDERVOLLEY
THUNDERVOLLEY
Aussie Darcy
  • Poll Poll
2017 WTA Premier 5 Italian Open.
6 7 8
Replies
387
Views
20K
MLRoy
MLRoy
Aussie Darcy
  • Poll Poll
2018 Miami Open - WTA Premier Mandatory
26 27 28
Replies
1K
Views
59K
Soianka
S
Aussie Darcy
  • Poll Poll
2018 Australian Open - Women's singles.
73 74 75
Replies
4K
Views
149K
Aussie Darcy
Aussie Darcy
Aussie Darcy
  • Poll Poll
2017 US Open. WTA.
83 84 85
Replies
4K
Views
151K
elkwood
elkwood
Back
Top