Petra Kvitova Set For More Wimbledon Glory After Madrid Open Success

Posted on | May 12, 2015 | No Comments

The reigning ladies Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova kick-started her 2015 campaign with a dominant win in the Madrid Open – and now looks set to repeat her success of last year at the All England Club.

The Czech star, currently ranked fourth in the world, had endured something of a mixed start to her season after being dumped out of the Australia Open in the last 32 by the previously unheralded Madison Keys.

This was followed by a pair of disappointing quarter-final defeats to Carla Suarez Navarro in WTA events in the sub-continent. So that triumph on the clay in Madrid will have done her confidence the world of good.

It wasn’t just the victory – but the manner of it – which will have lifted Kvitova’s spirits. She only dropped two sets en route to the title, and comprehensively beat the likes of Serena Williams, Svetlana Kuznetzova and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova along the way.

Her performance in the final, in which she dropped just three games to Kuznetzova, was both brutal and clinical. Kvitova, if anybody had ever doubted her, was back with a vengeance.

The Queen of Grass

With her powerful serve and aggressive baseline dominance, it’s no surprise that Kvitova has taken like a duck to, er, grass.

Her triumph at Wimbledon last year was her second Grand Slam crown on the surface, following her 6-3, 6-4 demolition of Maria Sharapova in the 2011 final.

But it was in 2014 when she showed why she is perhaps the leading grass court specialist on the WTA Tour. She disposed of the likes of Venus Williams and talented youngsters Lucie Safarova and Eugenie Bouchard with ease: dropping just one set in seven matches.

And so she will head into this year’s tournament as one of the hot favorites alongside perennial hot-shots Serena Williams and Sharapova.

Perfect Game

It’s fair to say that only the odd player on either the mens or womens tours really excels on grass, and Petra Kvitova certainly belongs in that bracket.

She serves hard – as quick as any woman out there – and hits the ball with so much force on the forehand side that she wins many cheap points.

Her relentless aggression and line hitting puts so much pressure on her opponents’ serve that she tends to break almost at will – as demonstrated by that 6-3, 6-0 mauling of Bouchard in last year’s final.

If all of the components of her game come together – and the signs from Madrid are that she’s peaking at just the right time – then she will take some stopping once again at Wimbledon.

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