Petra Kvitova back in the big time after ending hopes of an Aussie winner in Melbourne

A tearful Petra Kvitova is interviewed by TV host Jim Courier
EPA
Paul Newman22 January 2019

Petra Kvitova fought back the tears here today after reaching her first Grand Slam semi-final since the horrific knife attack that almost ended her career two years ago.

The two-times Wimbledon champion, who suffered severe hand injuries in December 2016 when she was attacked in her home, dashed Ashleigh Barty’s dreams of ending the long wait for a homegrown Australian Open champion by winning 6-1, 6-4.

Tears welled up in Kvitova’s eyes when she was asked afterwards whether she could ever have believed that she would be back competing at such a level.

“No I couldn’t have imagined being back in this stadium and playing with the best,” the 28-year-old Czech said as the crowd rose to applaud her.

Kvitova’s last appearance in a Grand Slam semi-final was at Wimbledon five years ago, when she went on to win the second of her All England Club titles.

In Pictures | Australian Open Tennis 2019

1/135

Nerves have regularly got the better of the world No6 at Grand Slam tournaments in recent years, but on this occasion she appeared fearless as she drove Barty back with her thunderous groundstrokes in a repeat of the result of their meeting in the Sydney International final 10 days ago.

The pressure of the occasion appeared to get to Barty, who was playing in her first Grand Slam quarter-final. The 22-year-old Australian improved in the second set, but at 4-4 she tightened up again as she was broken for the third time, giving Kvitova the chance to serve out for the match.

In her post-match interview Kvitova apologised to the crowd for beating the home favourite. “She’s such a nice person and you should be very proud of her,” Kvitova said.

In Thursday’s semi-finals Kvitova will face American Danielle Collins, 25, who has made remarkable progress in the last 12 months. A late starter on the professional tour after playing college tennis at the University of Virginia, Collins was ranked No 167 in the world at the start of last year but has since climbed 132 places.

Collins, making her tournament debut, had already beaten three seeds in Angelique Kerber, Julia Goerges and Caroline Garcia and claimed the scalp of a fourth when she beat Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 2-6, 7-5, 6-1.

Pavlyuchenkova has now lost in all five of her appearances in Grand Slam quarter-finals.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in