Those who spend their days dreaming up new ways to tap the marketability of the women’s game, who have had Maria Sharapova, Serena and Venus Williams, and Caroline Wozniacki to hang the finest clothes upon and shower with endorsements, may have hit a snag in Petra Kvitova.
She is more model professional than professional model.
The Wimbledon champion is not going to glam the place up in the next few weeks, but when you look for someone who can capture the biggest titles, the 21-year-old from Bilovec, in the Czech Republic, may be your woman. Remarkably, before reaching last year’s semi-finals at Wimbledon, she had never won a grass-court match. Now it is up to 18, taking her to a final in Eastbourne two weeks ago and a triumph at SW19. Talk about learning fast.
She is the first player born in 1990 or later to win a grand-slam tournament and has got there before the likes of Wozniacki, Agnieszka Radwanska, Victoria Azarenka or Sabine Lisicki, the final two being this year’s losing semi-finalists in SW19.
In effect, Kvitova is the essence of today’s winning professional. In successive grand-slam finals — after Li Na’s victory in Paris — we have seen two women whose success owes much to strong baseline hitting, durability and an unshakeable nerve. Saturday’s final turned as soon as Kvitova, who had lost her first service game, thundered a handful of marked responses back at Sharapova in the second and the 2004 champion from Russia knew that there was going to be no backing off.
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The added diversity of being a left-hander helped Kvitova in her 6-3, 6-4 victory, much as it did the only two other left-handers to have won this title, Ann Jones, who defeated a former champion in Billie Jean King to win the final in 1969, and Martina Navratilova, who did likewise in 1978, when Chris Evert was the first victim in her nine singles victories.
In these pages on Saturday, Navratilova had said that she felt Kvitova had all the qualities to emerge victorious. She must have been especially impressed with how consistently and nervelessly she struck the ball. Serving for the championship, she did so with astonishing confidence and held to love. “I was just focused on every point, not that it was the final,” she said.
Looking at the state of the women’s game, who will challenge Kvitova at the US Open? The Williams sisters will return to New York with total selfbelief, Wozniacki will have the 2009 final and 2010 semi-final on which to draw inspiration, Kim Clijsters, the champion last year, ought to be fit and Azarenka and Lisicki have had a taste of coming close at Wimbledon.