Czech tennis players have achieved a lot at Grand Slam tournaments. Do you know which of them played in the final before Muchova?

Grand Slam tournaments are the pinnacle of tennis and only the best manage to win one in their career. Major finals are one of the most watched sporting events of the year and thanks to our tennis players, they have recently become quite regular with Czech participation. Let’s remember who before Karolina Muchová defended our colours in the finals of these prestigious events.

In the first part of the article on this topic you can go back to the nineties together with Jana Novotna or Petr Korda. You will also recall Tomas Berdych and his long struggle for the very top.

Novotná retired a year after her lifetime triumph at the All England Club and Czech tennis had to wait a long time for her successor. Meanwhile, the Williams sisters and later the Belgians Henin and Clijsters took over the WTA circuit.

Then came 2010 and the twenty-year-old Petra Kvitová surprised everyone with her move to the very place where Novotná had shone twelve long years ago.

Back then, the native of Fulnek defeated Estonia’s Kanepi in a huge battle in the quarterfinals and was looking forward to a duel with Serena Williams. She didn’t lose to her either, losing after sets 6::7 and 2::6, but her biggest moments were yet to come.

And they came in the same place a year later. By then, Kvitova was already one of the favourites for the most prestigious tournament on the planet, and she came through the tournament on the grass courts in London with flying colours. Twice she needed three sets to advance, but in both cases she won the deciding set with ease. In the final, she met local champion Sharapova and gave her no chance.

The triumph of the left-handed Czech was only the third victory of our colours at Wimbledon, including our joint history with Slovakia within Czechoslovakia. Kvitova, however, had one more exceptional feat in store. Most tennis fans will have guessed which one.

In 2014, she had to overcome an obstacle named Venus Williams in the third round of Wimbledon. After a long three-set battle, the Czech succeeded and flew through the rest of the London Grand Slam without losing a set.

In a record-breaking final, she dispatched the 20-year-old Canadian Bouchard and became the only player in Czech tennis history to win her second Grand Slam title.

An era without a clear WTA ruler

Serena Williams won her last Big Four title at the start of 2017. Grand Slam champions have been changing quite quickly since those times. Petra Kvitova and Karolina Pliskova were one match short of winning to reassert the Czech flag in this elite list.

Kvitova lost to Osaka in her third career final at the Australian Open and Pliskova fell short to then world number one Kerber of Germany at the US Open. Both finals were battles as they should be, with Kvitova and Pliskova falling in the third set. The latter player had an unsuccessful final at Wimbledon 2021.

However, the focus of the Czech tennis players’ success has shifted to a place where few expected it.

Paris successes

During the existence of the independent Czech Republic, it was long believed that the final participation of our colours in one of the Grand Slams was almost cursed. This is the clay French Open. A pleasant change came in 2015, when from the position of the world number thirteen, the sympathetic twenty-eight-year-old Czech went through the whole tournament perfectly and after scalps of the world number two Sharapova and number seven Ivanovic she entered the final against Serena Williams.

You probably remembered Lucie Safarova. She didn’t beat the world number one in the final, but she seemed to have lifted the curse of Roland Garros for Czech tennis players. Since then, they have been winning the French Open quite regularly.

Four years after Lucie Šafářová, Markéta Vondroušová had a great run in Paris. Without losing a set, she made it to the final, where she was taught a lesson by the phenomenal Australian Barty, but still experienced the success of her life.

Only one edition of the French open was without Czech participation. Barbora Krejčíková was here twice in 2021. The experienced Czech doubles player shocked the tennis world. She managed to win not only the doubles, but she also added a triumph in the singles.

Just like Vondroušová, Krejčíková has not been able to come close to a similarly valuable result at Roland Garros again, at least not yet. However, as usual, another name came up. Karolína Muchová experienced the tournament of her dreams a few days ago and she too got a taste of the Grand Slam final atmosphere.

Let’s hope that the names in this elite club of Czech tennis will continue to grow. Looking at the number of young tennis players and their more experienced partners who still haven’t said the last word, we can certainly hope so.

Source:: WTA, Roland Garros