Karolina Pliskova was a victim of really bad WTA scheduling, causing her to rush and nearly miss her flight to Doha.
Pliskova was in action last week in Cluj-Napoca, where she finally won a trophy again. It's been four years since Pliskova last lifted a trophy, so going to Cluj-Napoca and playing there proved a really good decision.
Despite all that, it also created a lot of problems for her as she had to rush to catch a flight to Doha after the final. Due to the way the Qatar Open scheduled matches, Pliskova found herself playing on the first day, one day after the Transylvania Open final.
Obviously, that's not ideal as she found herself in a situation similar to Daria Kasatkina, who publicly spoke out against it. The Russian was in a much better situation, though, as she had to fly from Abu Dhabi to Qatar.
That's a one-hour flight as opposed to Pliskova, who had to catch a long flight to Doha. Per her husband, Michal Hrdlicka, who reacted to it on social media, it's a flight she nearly missed.
"She caught the flight from Cluj via Istanbul to Doha at the last minute. If the final in Romania had been played just a little longer, she would not have reached Qatar at all."
"This is how she arrived at the hotel at 8 in the morning, slept for 4 hours, had a quick lunch, 14:30 warm up and a match. Extremely challenging conditions."
It was a really tight window for Pliskova to even make it to the event, and even then, it was just a brutal sequence of events. What's impressive, though, is that Pliskova won her match and will now play at least one more in Doha.
We'll see whether fatigue catches up with her in the next rounds.
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