Petra Kvitova: The top tennis player whose career was nearly ended by a rapist

Petra Kvitova has had many successes during her career, but everything in her life has not been rosy. She had to go through a very traumatic experience when she was attacked by a man with a knife, but despite the odds she managed to get back on the courts.

Petra Kvitová was born on March 8, 1990 in Bilovec into the family of Jiří Kvitová and Pavla Kvitová. The whole family was involved in tennis, her father was even a tennis coach, so he coached little Petra in the beginning.

Although Kvitová was born in Bílovec, she spent her childhood in nearby Fulnek. There she also competed for TJ Fulnek, from where she went to Prostějov at the age of sixteen. With the transfer, her father Jiří Kvita stopped coaching her.

With the move to Prostějov she also started to gain great success immediately. At the age of seventeen, she first won the Czech Republic senior girls’ singles and doubles championships, then in the same year she even made her first appearance at an ITF tournament. The reward for her successful season was the Golden Canary award in the talent of the year category.

Kvitova did not play ITF tournaments for very long. Just a year later, she made her debut at the WTA tournament in Stockholm, Sweden. And she left a good impression there, too, when she lost in the first round after a great fight to Poland’s Domachowska in three sets.

The Czech tennis player’s career was still going up. Already in 2008, she broke into the top 50 of the WTA rankings, and she also scored her first win in the Fed Cup team competition. At the beginning of the next year she had a great success when she won the WTA tournament for the first time. It happened in Hobart, when she beat another Czech, Iveta Benešová, in the final.

Petra Kvitová made a big performance shift in 2011. She won tournaments in Brisbane, Paris, Madrid and even the famous Wimbledon. On the London grass, she beat Maria Sharapova in the final.

After a series of good results, the native of Bílovec moved up to a beautiful 3rd place in the WTA rankings, even the final Champions Tournament was waiting for her. Kvitova reigned supreme there and after this prestigious triumph she ended the season in second place in the WTA rankings with a minimal loss. It is also worth mentioning the team success, when she won the Fed Cup for the first time with the Czech team.

After an extremely successful season came a slight drop in performance and a fall to eighth place in the rankings. The return to the top five came in 2014, mainly thanks to winning the second Wimbledon title.

2016 was not an ideal year for the Czech tennis player. First, after a series of poor performances, she dropped out of the top ten overall ranking, then came the injury and at the end of the year she became a victim of a robbery. Due to cuts on her left hand, Kvitová had to take a long break from tennis.

Fortunately, the wounds healed well and the Czech tennis player participated in her first tournament after her return in May 2017. And no one minded that she dropped out in the second round. But at the next tournament in Birmingham, Kvitova surprised everyone when she unexpectedly walked all the way to the overall victory.

It was admirable how Petra Kvitova returned to the top level after a serious injury. In 2019, she even had a unique chance to storm to the top of the WTA world rankings. But unfortunately, key tournaments didn’t go the way she needed and she had to settle for second place.

Tennis has brought Petra Kvitová a lot of joy, among other things, she met her coach Jiří Vanek, who is now a couple.

Sources