Australian Open 2023: Two years after undiagnosable knee issue, Magda Linette is into semi-finals

It was 2021 and Magda Linette was looking forward to playing the Australian Open. The Polish player was struggling with a knee issue but was hoping to shrug it off. She had her flight ticket booked. The hotel room too. She didn’t mind having to isolate as part of the mandatory requirements against the coronavirus. A day before she was to depart, disaster struck. The pain and discomfort got worse. Enough that she couldn’t walk, let alone play professional sport. The subsequent day, she withdrew from the first Grand Slam of the year. The now 30-year-old had played five Melbourne majors in a row, still this one stung.

SEMIFINAL🔥🔥🔥#AusOpen pic.twitter.com/ahVU0bqAHV

— Magda Linette (@MagdaLinette) January 25, 2023

To add to the frustration, no one could figure what the injury was. It eventually took 11 weeks for her to be diagnosed with a meniscus injury which needed surgery and resulted in a five-month layoff. “It just broke to pieces really,” she had said at the time. She spent close to eight hours a day in rehab and pushed to come back and played her first tournament of the year in March. Besides the question marks over the physical fitness, there were niggling thoughts of dropping in ranks and of the injury reappearing.

Pure joy on her face 🥲@MagdaLinette • @wwos • @espn • @eurosport • @wowowtennis • #AusOpen • #AO2023 pic.twitter.com/SqmrazAjnf

— #AusOpen (@AustralianOpen) January 25, 2023

The results were not encouraging. She went 18-18 in 2011 with bests of semi-finals in Strasbourg and Cleveland. In 2022, the best she had mustered was a quarter-final in Charleston. This forced her to change tact. Linette, who turned pro in 2009, dropped down to the WTA125 level starting with tournaments Saint Malo and then in Paris. Later, she reached the final of Tampico Open in Mexico.

🇵🇱 Radwanska
🇵🇱 Swiatek
🇵🇱 Linette@MagdaLinette is the third Polish woman to reach the #AusOpen semifinals!#AO2023 pic.twitter.com/ObWSvPfSxd

— #AusOpen (@AustralianOpen) January 25, 2023

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Her perseverance and grind were rewarded on Wednesday in Melbourne as she progressed to the Australian Open semi-final. With head-to-head record reading 2-9, the unseeded Pole beat former World No 1 Karolina Pliskova 6-3, 7-5 and called it a “dream come true.” That journey in 2021 is decisive in bringing her here and in keeping the Pole calm. “I think it couldn’t be really worse, right? I honestly didn’t play for five months. Was dropping my ranking and dropping points from pandemic time. I didn’t really want to freeze my ranking, because that would mean another month for me to be out of competition. I was just worried I’m going to go out of 100, and I wasn’t sure if I can really do it,” she said on Wednesday. “I felt, look, I’m not that young anymore. If I drop out, I need to go a level down to ITF. I don’t know what’s going to happen,” added the Pole who will enter the top-30 when the tournament concludes. The calm demeanour helped her get the better of Pliskova who had been in pulsating form – especially with the serve. The 6-foot-11-inches tall Czech had waltzed into the quarters without dropping a set, largely on the back of serving 28 aces, including 12 against China’s Zhang Shuai. But she added only seven to that tally in an inconsistent display against Linette, while also committing a jaw-dropping 36 unforced errors to her opponent’s 16. Many had picked a player from Poland to make the latter stages of the tournament. But not many would have picked Linette out of the three that made up the singles draw across men and women. Linette would need to be on point on Thursday evening against another big-server in Aryna Sabalenka, who beat Donna Vekic 6-3, 6-2 in the other quarter-final.