Older sister by 2 minutes wins in the first ever WTA match between twins

A tennis match between twin sisters with a two-minute difference was fierce. At the end of the game, however, both the winner and the loser hugged each other with a composed look on their faces.

In the women's singles second round at the Nature Valley Classic on the WTA Tour held in Birmingham on Thursday, Czech tennis players Karolína Plíšková ranked No. 3 in the world and Kristýna Plíšková ranked No. 112 faced each other. What has drawn spectators’ attention is that they are twin sisters born in March 1992. This was the WTA Tour's first ever clash between twins in a main draw match.

Looking at the world ranking and past performance alone, the younger sister was thought to be more dominant. She recorded 13 wins in the WTA Tour women’s singles and was ranked No. 1 in the world in 2017. Her older sister, Kristýna, won once in the singles and reached the 35th position in 2017, which was her highest ranking so far. The accumulated prize money that the younger sister had earned so far is 17 million dollars, about seven times higher than the older twin’s 2.4 million dollars.

However, the unexpected results unfolded. Elder twin Kristýna broke serve at 2-1 after almost two hours of nail-biting back-and-forth and advanced to the quarterfinals.

It’s hard to tell who is who between the twin sisters based on their appearances. Younger twin Karolína is 186 centimeters in height, about two centimeters taller than the winner today. In addition, the older twin is left-handed while the younger one is right-handed.

The twins who started playing tennis at the age of four fought before as junior players with the even record of five wins and five losses. Today was their first meeting on an official tennis match in six years. Kristýna served 24 aces against the younger sister and hit 49 winning shots compared to Karolína’s 25.


Jong-Seok Kim kjs0123@donga.com