Petra Kvitova touched by crowd’s reaction to winning Centre Court return | Barney Ronay | Sport
Petra Kvitova produced the most stirring moment of Wimbledon’s opening day, beating Johanna Larsson in straight sets on Centre Court to confirm both her own status as an improbable candidate for a third women’s title and another step in a heartening comeback story.
Seven months ago all four fingers on Kvitova’s left hand â€" her tennis hand â€" were lacerated by the blade of a knife carried by an intruder at her home in the Czech Republic. Kvitova still has not regained full strength in her grip. Before the tournament she was still wondering if her serve and her forehand might improve as the fortnight goes on and her fingers get stronger. The idea of playing seven high intensity matches in a fortnight sounds less like rehabilitation, more like an unremitting punishment for severed and healing tendons.
And yet Kvitova is now comfortably through to the second round, producing a performance here that was initially rusty but which thrummed up through the gears and showcased some lusty hitting. She was watched from the players’ box by her family and also by her surgeon, the entire Kvitova camp wearing T-shirts with the slogan “Courage, belief, loveâ€. By the end a 6-3, 6-4 victory contained only one moment of uncertainty as Kvitova seemed to run out of gas a little midway through the second set. Larsson broke back to take it to 4-4 but was then reeled in by the class and power of Kvitova’s groundstrokes.
The match was closed out to a wash of fond applause for a popular former champion who really might not have been back here had the knife cut a little deeper last December. The attack itself was both horrific and a little bizarre in its details. Kvitova was having breakfast when a man rang the doorbell claiming to be there to read the electricity meter. The man entered her home and attacked her with a knife, causing serious injury as she fought him off. Kvitova’s attacker fled with the equivalent of £150, although the incident has reportedly been reclassified by local police as a blackmail attempt.
Kvitova was visibly relieved just to play a completed match at a tournament she said gave her the motivation to work through the pain of rehabilitation. “I felt real energy from the crowd and it was amazing to be back here playing on Centre Court again,†she said. “I’m very happy that the dream came true.â€
For all that, this still looked like a slightly tender workout for a player feeling her way back, one who will need to enact an unusual balance between recuperation and stretching her way into match-playing fitness. A late decision to enter the French Open in May led to Kvitova winning her first match back but losing her second. At the end of last month she won on grass in Birmingham. Now she is, improbably, one of the bookmakers’ favourites to win Wimbledon, tribute to both her own champion history and also to the love of the tennis public for a comeback tale that represents a triumph of will and spirit.
At the end the royal box stood to applaud both players off as Kvitova signed autographs with a notably careful grip of the marker pen, designed perhaps not to take too much out of those convalescent fingers. Before these Championships she had announced that her first game here would be her own final. A little rusty, a little down on match-play, but with no weight on her shoulders, Kvitova has the chance of six more now â€" not to mention an outsider’s shot at one of the great and greatly improbable Wimbledon stories.
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