DUBAI // One of the top picks for the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships title this week, especially after her success in Doha last week, world No 3 Karolina Pliskova talks about life on the tour alongside identical twin sister Kristyna, the world No 58 who is also in action here this week.
Causing confusion "Sometimes it's tough because it can be quite confusing as both may look the same," said Karolina, who won the title in Brisbane and is now 15-1 in 2017, with her only loss coming in the quarter-final of the Australian Open against Mirjana Lucic-Baroni. "After so many years I am still surprised that people do not recognise who is who."
Spot the differences "Well we have the tattoos," Karolina said, when asked how to differentiate between the two. Karolina sports two tattoos – on her left thigh and left arm – while her sister has one. "She is a lefty and I am right-handed, and we have different hair. So I think we are a little bit different, and someone who is with us more often will know. But for someone who keeps seeing us at different times, it can be quite tough to differentiate one from the other."
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Life on the tour "It is definitely an advantage to have someone on tour with you for company," Karolina said. "In the past two or three years, we have not met much on the tour [with her sister ranked outside the top 100]. But she has been moving up in the rankings and definitely it will be better now that we have a lot of tournaments together. Maybe in the future we can even start to play doubles again."
Talking tennis "We play tennis every day, so there is a lot to talk about tennis," said Karolina, the No 2 seed in Dubai. "Obviously we talk about different things as well. If I feel bad on the court or something, then we talk about it and go through it together. It's not always about tennis, though. Yes, yes ... we talk about boys, too."
Fed Cup dreams "She is No 58 right now and it is just a matter of time before my sister [makes it] in [the Czech Fed Cup team]," Karolina said. "It would be a dream to be with her in the team. It is a lot of hard work and a long week during Fed Cup, and it would be very good to have a friend like this. Even in the doubles it would be very special as well. Let's wait and see how things work out."
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