At the same time as Rafael Nadal was announcing his withdrawal from Wimbledon due to an abdominal injury, Czech Republic’s Linda Klimovicova was in an adjacent media room dreaming of title-winning glory at the Junior Championships.

For the second match in succession, Klimovicova required three sets to dispatch her opponent, on this occasion recovering from a set down to overcome home favourite Jasmine Conway of Great Britain 2-6 6-2 6-1.

Having lost in the first round of her previous two Junior Grand Slams, the 18-year-old is now just one win away from the Junior Championships final and will do battle with Hungary’s Luca Udvardy in tomorrow’s semis.

The strength of Czech tennis is well documented and only last month Lucie Havlickova topped the podium at the Roland Garros Junior Championships, building on the success of Linda Noskova in Paris 12 months earlier.

That said, there has only been one Czech champion at the Junior Championships this century and that was Kristyna Pliskova more than a decade ago in 2010. Klimovicova has designs on amending that statistic.

“Czech tennis is very strong and there is inspiration everywhere,” Klimovicova told itftennis.com.

“It is great to see girls from the Czech Republic do so well in recent Junior Grand Slams. Others see that success and it is a super strong group of players. We all push each other. I am hungry to go further here, as far as I can, and of course I dream of winning the title.

“It was tough today, a tough match. In the first set I didn’t play very well, and I made a lot of mistakes from the baseline. Also, my serve wasn’t good, so the first set was a difficult one.

“After that, I started getting into it and I felt better out there. I started serving better I started playing well. Luck was on my side.”

It was not all smiles for Czech Republic during the quarter-finals, however, as No. 3 seed Nikola Bartunkova, who was part of the victorious Czech team at the 2021 Junior Billie Jean King Cup by BNP Paribas Finals in Antalya, fell by the wayside.

Bartunkova succumbed 6-3 6-2 to No. 7 seed Udvardy, who will now face Czech opposition for the second successive round in form of Klimovicova.

The second semi-final will be contested by No. 1 seed Liv Hovde of the United States and Canada’s Victoria Mboko after their quarter-final victories against Germany’s Ella Seidel and South African qualifier Isabella Kruger respectively.  

Hovde prevailed 6-3 6-2, while Mboko staged an incredible comeback after losing the opening set 6-0, surging into the semi-finals following a 0-6 7-5 6-4 triumph.