Far more seats were empty than occupied when the second-round match between No. 1 seed Karolina Pliskova and 127th-ranked Nicole Gibbs commenced in Arthur Ashe Stadium. Maybe fans were anticipating a blowout, a Thursday afternoon snoozer.
Perhaps they had looked at the previous time the two competitors met, at the 2015 Apia International Sydney in Australia, when Pliskova won in straight sets without dropping a game. Instead they saw the young American push Pliskova, easily taking the first set before losing 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 in the second round of the U.S. Open.
The circumstances were far different from when they played in Australia two years ago. There Gibbs advanced to the second round only because Simona Halep withdrew from the tournament. She was apparently notified of her match just 30 minutes before it began, as she was on her way to the airport.
“I definitely was looking to come out and prove that that wasn’t representative of my level,” Gibbs said.
And she did, winning the opening set Thursday. Gibbs was hitting her targets and withstanding Pliskova’s dominant serve, winning two break points against the player she called the “ace queen.”
“I obviously came out really well,” Gibbs said. “I thought that more often than not I was the aggressor in the first set.”
Gibbs looked comfortable early on and said she wasn’t “thinking too much about the court or the moment” then.
Slowly the seats began to fill, and cheers for the 24-year-old swelled.
As the moment amplified, and the crowd grew, Gibbs began to grasp just how big the stage and the opportunity were.
She said it was after the sixth game of the second set, with the score knotted at 3-3, that she started to lose some speed on her ground strokes and “maybe feel the weight of the moment a little bit more.”
Pliskova took advantage, taking three straight games to secure the second set. While Gibbs put up a solid fight the rest of the way, the Czech would not go down on her serve and secured the win. Gibbs was 0-for-7 on break points after the first set.
Four of the top 10 in the women’s field have already been knocked out. Pliskova narrowly avoided being the fifth.
“I thought since we played two times, we practiced, saw a few of her matches, that she was going to be more defending,” Pliskova said. “She really was going for her shots. All credit to her.”
Though Gibbs said she was disappointed in the overall outcome, she is optimistic that her game is trending up. Her U.S. Open performance was on the whole impressive. Gibbs beat Veronica Cepede Royg, 6-0, 1-6, 6-1, in the first round and then pushed the top-seeded player in the tournament.
“It used to be that I was losing kind of straight sets, not so close, every time I came up against a top player, and now I feel like I’m consistently kind of knocking on the door,” Gibbs said.
But of course, that isn’t enough. Gibbs, who has never won a professional title and is just 4-9 in 2017, is tired of knocking.
“I really want to take that next step,” she said. “and start to win some of these matches.”