Having won one of the most important lead-up events to the Australian Open, 2015 shapes as the year where Petra Kvitova must start to perform at the Grand Slams outside of the All England Club.
Dual Wimbledon champion Kvitova warmed up for the first Grand Slam tournament of the year, where she was a semi-finalist in 2012, by defeating compatriot Karolina Pliskova in straight sets to win the Sydney International.
The Czech left-hander was seen by many as the favourite for the title after top seed Simona Halep was forced to withdraw before her first scheduled match due to an illness which she contracted in Shenzhen last week.
As it turned out, Pliskova was the biggest beneficiary of Halep’s withdrawal as it was the Romanian who she was originally supposed to play in the second round.
Instead, Pliskova played lucky loser Nicole Gibbs and inflicted the double bagel before going on to defeat Carla Suarez Navarro and Angelique Kerber en route to reaching the first Premier-level final of her fledgling career.
Anyway, back on topic now and winning in Sydney will hopefully see Petra Kvitova, a serial underachiever at the Grand Slams outside of the All England Club, produce much better results as she looks to consolidate her top four ranking.
The 24-year-old has not gone past the third round at any non-Wimbledon Grand Slam tournament since the 2012 US Open, when she came very close to reaching the quarter-finals in New York for the first time before being denied by the now-retired Marion Bartoli.
Her three-set loss to Bartoli was considered all the more disappointing considering she’d only lost two games to the Frenchwoman in a recent meeting in Montreal en route to winning the title there.
Kvitova had also won the final pre-US Open warm-up event in New Haven and was considered a serious contender for the New York Grand Slam, the only such event where she is yet to reach the quarter-finals.
The debacle in New York two-and-a-half years ago would mark the beginning of Kvitova’s Grand Slam struggles outside of the All England Club.
In 2013, she fell in the second round of the Australian Open to Laura Robson, was a third round loser to Jamie Hampton at Roland Garros and then, with the draw wide open and the title seemingly hers to lose, was upset in the quarter-finals by unheralded Belgian Kirsten Flipkens at Wimbledon.
It then got worse in New York when she was grounded by illness. She lost to little-known American Alison Riske in straight sets in the third round, winning a mere three games.
It was after that loss she fell out of the top ten for the first time since May 2011, however she would end 2013 strongly by winning a Premier event in Tokyo and reaching the semi-finals at the year-end championships in Istanbul.
Kvitova started 2014 ranked sixth in the world but her Grand Slam year would get off to yet another disastrous start, losing in the first round to Luksika Kumkhum. That was then followed by another third round loss at Roland Garros, where she lost a three-set cliffhanger to former champion Svetlana Kuznetsova.
A return to the All England Club, the venue of her very first Grand Slam victory in 2011, suddenly marked a return to form for Kvitova, as she would lose only one set en route to winning for a second time at the expense of Eugenie Bouchard.
That one set she lost was against Venus Williams in the third round. At one stage in that match she was just two points away from losing, however Kvitova would show her fighting spirit to edge out the five-time Wimbledon champion in three sets.
It was no surprise to many that she was installed as the favourite to win again after both Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova failed to reach the quarter-finals.
True to the form guide, Kvitova lost just three games against Bouchard to win her second Wimbledon title and dispel the dreaded “one-slam wonder” tag. The victory saw her return to the top four in the world rankings.
She was then considered a chance to go deep at Flushing Meadows, where she was seeded third. But again her Grand Slam demons would fail her as she lost early yet again, this time at the hands of 145th-ranked Serbian Aleksandra Krunic.
As she did twelve months earlier, she would finish 2014 strongly, winning the inaugural title in Wuhan (again at the expense of Eugenie Bouchard) and came close to winning in Beijing before falling to Maria Sharapova in three sets.
She did get some revenge on the Russian at the WTA Finals in Singapore, but failed to get past the round robin stage, finishing at the bottom of her group. Still, she finished 2014 ranked fourth.
The strong form that Kvitova showed in the back half of last year has carried on into the new season, with a semi-final showing in Shenzhen and of course the aforementioned title in Sydney.
Prior to Kvitova’s win, three of the past four Sydney champions had done very well in Melbourne. Li Na, the winner in 2011, finished runner-up to Kim Clijsters at the Grand Slam, while Victoria Azarenka followed up her Sydney title in 2012 by winning her very first Major title at the expense of Maria Sharapova.
In 2013, Agnieszka Radwanska served Dominika Cibulkova a double-bagel to win in Sydney, before having her 13-match and 26-set winning streak ended by Li Na in the quarter-finals at Melbourne Park.
Last year’s champion Tsvetana Pironkova, unseeded in Melbourne, was unlucky to have drawn Samantha Stosur in the second round and was beaten in straight sets while battling a leg injury and fatigue.
So what does the 2015 Australian Open have in store for Petra Kvitova?
The fourth seed’s draw at Melbourne Park is relatively easy, though she has been assigned to the same half as world number one and hot title favourite Serena Williams and the same quarter as sixth seed Agnieszka Radwanska.
Kvitova will face a qualifier in the first round before her first seeded threat comes in the form of Australia’s Casey Dellacqua (29th) in round three. Another local favourite, Sam Stosur (20th), or Germany’s Andrea Petkovic (13th) could await in the fourth round.
Given she has good records against most of the players in her eighth of the draw, her lofty world ranking of number four and the fact she is injury-free, there will be no excuses for the Czech to slip up early at Melbourne Park.
Kvitova looms as the major threat to Serena Williams reaching her first final at the Australian Open since 2010. The left-hander has never beaten Williams (a walkover for Kvitova in Madrid last year doesn’t count), but she need not look as far back as Ana Ivanovic’s upset victory over the world number one last year for inspiration.
It was at the Australian Open last year where Ivanovic, who had never won a set off Williams in four previous meetings, caused the boilover of the tournament, sent the top seed packing and blew the draw wide open.
After losing the first set, Ivanovic did not face another break point as she conjured an unbelievable three-set victory, however the celebrations got a little bit too much as she then lost to Eugenie Bouchard in her subsequent quarter-final.
Thus, there is reason for Kvitova to believe that she can beat Serena Williams for the first time, if they do meet in the semi-finals as projected. Doing so would qualify her for her first Australian Open final, but first thing’s first for the Czech – she must get through the early rounds first, something she hasn’t done since 2012.
The Australian Open is only the beginning for Kvitova. With only a first round appearance to defend last year, the Czech will have the chance to earn fresh rankings points and close the gap on world number three Simona Halep, who must defend quarter-final points from 2014, in the rankings.
After that, she will have the chance to earn more fresh rankings points at the French and US Opens, where she lost in the third round last year, but will have to be at her best if she is to successfully defend her Wimbledon title later this year.
And so, after years of underachieving at the Grand Slams, with the obvious exception of Wimbledon, there are now no excuses for Petra Kvitova to continue to misfire at the Grand Slams in 2015 and possibly beyond. It’s time for her to achieve her full potential and start doing well elsewhere.
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