The Livesport Prague Open has often functioned as a showcase of the remarkable Czech talent conveyor belt, with five of its 10 editions since 2015 ending in a home champion being crowned.<\/p>\n
Prague: Scores<\/a> | Draws<\/a> | Order of play<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n This year, that’s even more the case than ever. Eleven Czech players — five direct entrants, two qualifiers and four wild cards — started in the 32-strong main draw. The only tour-level event in the Open Era with more was Roland Garros 2023, a 128-player draw featuring 12 Czechs.<\/p>\n Even more impressively, eight of those 11 won their openers, meaning that half of the last 16 is comprised of Czech players — an Open Era record. (The previous record of seven Czechs in a tour-level Round of 16 was also set at Prague, unsurprisingly, in both 2015 and 2016.)<\/p>\n Indeed, of the three Czech first-round losses, two came in matchups between home players — meaning that only one Czech fell to a foreign opponent (qualifier Jesika Maleckova to Slovakian No. 2 seed Rebecca Sramkova).<\/p>\n While only two of the Czechs in the draw are seeded – No. 1 Linda Noskova, the 2023 finalist, and No. 5 Marie Bouzkova, the 2022 champion — six are aged 21 or under, emphasizing the country’s plethora of up-and-coming talent. They include Noskova, currently at a career high of No. 23 after making the Wimbledon fourth round; 2024 Roland Garros junior champion Tereza Valentova, 18, who has won her first two WTA 125 titles in the past seven weeks and is now ranked No. 106; and former junior No. 1 Lucie Havlickova, 20, on the comeback trail after being sidelined for 15 months.<\/p>\n Dominika Salkova, 21, reached the second round of Prague for the third time; Barbora Palicova, also 21, notched her first career WTA main-draw victory; and Sara Bejlek, 19, made a victorious return from a month-long injury layoff that forced her to miss Wimbledon. Meanwhile, 29-year-old Katerina Siniakova successfully held it down for the older Czech generation.<\/p>\n Moreover, the youngest Czech player in the draw, 17-year-old Alena Kovackova, also put together a career-best tournament by qualifying for her first WTA main draw with wins over Arina Rodionova and Lucrezia Stefanini. Kovackova’s 15-year-old sister Jana, the junior No. 9, also received a qualifying wild card, where she stretched Nina Stojanovic to three sets in the first round.<\/p>\n Looking ahead, there could be more records still to be set. The current record number of Czechs in a tour-level quarterfinal lineup is six, and the record number in a tour-level semifinal lineup is three, both set — surprise! — at Prague 2015. This week, seven Czechs could potentially make the last eight, and there is at least one home player in each quarter — meaning there could be an all-Czech semifinal slate on Friday.<\/p>\n There have been eight all-Czech WTA finals since the country’s independence in 1993, of which the latest was Siniakova’s defeat of Bouzkova at Nanchang 2023.<\/p>\n By the numbers: How a record eight Czechs made it to the last 16<\/p>\n [1] Linda Noskova (CZE) d. [Q] Anastasia Gasanova 7-6(5), 7-6(7) Flashback: Czech dominance at Prague 2015<\/p>\n Final: [1] Karolina Pliskova d. [Q] Lucie Hradecka 4-6, 7-5, 6-3
[WC] Dominika Salkova (CZE) d. [WC] Laura Samson (CZE) 6-3, 6-3
Katerina Siniakova (CZE) d. [7] Elena-Gabriela Ruse (ROU) 7-5, 6-2
[WC] Lucie Havlickova (CZE) d. [Q] Alena Kovackova (CZE) 7-5, 6-1
Sara Bejlek (CZE) d. Moyuka Uchijima (JPN) 7-5, 6-2
[5] Marie Bouzkova (CZE) d. [Q] Gao Xinyu (CHN) 6-0, 6-2
[WC] Barbora Palicova (CZE) d. Priscilla Hon (AUS) 6-2, 3-6, 6-3
Tereza Valentova (CZE) d. Aoi Ito (JPN) 6-2, 6-0<\/p>\n
Semifinalist: Katerina Siniakova
Quarterfinalists: [WC] Denisa Satralova (n\u00e9e\u00a0Allertova), [3] Barbora Strycova, [WC] Klara Koukalova<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Livesport Prague Open has often functioned as a showcase of the remarkable Czech talent conveyor belt, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,661,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-283565","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-text","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114899127072971424","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}