Like other tennis players, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova missed 6 months due to the coronavirus pandemic. The restart in tennis was unsuccessful. Initially, it all started with the fact that the Russian woman decided not to enter the US Open 2020. At the Cincinnati Masters, the native of Samara was also not on the list of participants. Thus, Nastya did not play at all on American hard courts. Pavklyuchenkova played an official match in the Czech Republic for the first time after quarantine. At the tournament in Prague, which was held on clay, in the 1/16 finals the Russian woman was drawn with the Dutch tennis player Arancha Rus (WTA # 71). Despite the fact that the 36-th WTA racket was the clear favorite among the bookmakers (1.29 against 3.79), the Russian woman lost to her rival, spending almost 2 hours (7: 5, 6: 2). On September 4, it became known that Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova began cooperation with a new coach. It was Rob Steckley. The start of the competition in Rome turned out to be difficult. The Samara native played against Zhang Shuai (# 40) in the first round. In a difficult match, Nastya managed to break the resistance of the representative of China (6: 4, 6: 7, 6: 1). Both athletes made many mistakes, but the Russian woman was helped out by a better serve.
Lights are simply unrecognizable this season, because the team has become a real leader. If in the main tournament the club managed to take the fifth line, then during the playoffs they really broke through. It is unlikely that Miami would have achieved such a result without Jimmy Butler, who became a real leader not only on the floor, but also in the locker room. We should also pay tribute to his teammates and head coach Eric Spoelstra, who recently could be satisfied with the actions of his charges since the days of LeBron James and Dwayne Wade. “Heats” smashed “Indiana” at the start, as the opponent did not manage to catch even one victory. However, as it turned out, it was only a warm-up. The next opponent was Milwaukee, led by Yannis Adetokunbo. The quarterfinals turned out to be rich in spectacular moments and emotions. We saw a real fight, but Heats allowed Bucks to prove themselves only once, in all other fights of Eric Spoliestra’s guys it was simply unstoppable, as a result, the victory in the series (4-1).
