Czech party pooper Petra Kvitova shattered Samantha Stosur’s Australian Open dream with a straight-sets third-round victory over the great local hope on Saturday night.
Stosur never recovered after losing a tense 63-minute first set, eventually succumbing 7-6 (7-5) 6-3 in a major disappointment at Melbourne Park.
Hardly a household name in Australia, Kvitova nevertheless arrived for the season-opening grand slam in ominous form after winning the Brisbane International two weeks ago.
The hard-hitting left-hander also reached the Wimbledon semi-finals last year and had the Stosur camp extra nervous after crushing the Australian for the loss of just three games in their only previous meeting at the 2008 French Open.
Stosur’s worst fears were realised when the 20-year-old world No.28 bludgeoned 35 clean winners to Stosur’s 11 to send the fifth seed packing after one hour and 35 minutes.
Australia’s world No.6 created ample opportunities throughout the match to break Kvitova but was never really able to come to terms with the southpaw’s wide-angled serve to her backhand.
“I don’t really know how I lost it, to be honest,” a dejected Stosur said.
“Felt like I started playing a bit better and was probably on top of her and then all of a sudden it was gone and I was a set down.
“I thought she played extremely well pretty much the whole way through. It was a match of a point here and a point there and she got the ones that really mattered.
“It’s a tough loss, but I think I can walk off thinking I played quite well and did everything that I could.”
Tellingly, though, Stosur only managed to win 38 per cent of points on her second delivery, the usually reliable big kicker that has become such a feature of the French Open runner-up’s game.
While Kvitova can look forward with high hopes to a fourth-round encounter on Monday with Italian Flavia Pennetta, Australia’s 33-year Open title drought continues.
“I would have dearly have loved to gone further than what I did,” Stosur said.
“It’s hard when you run into an opponent that’s playing very well. They’re not easy matches to win.
“But I’d much rather have this scenario than have played terrible and lost it myself.”
Stosur was under the pump from the outset, having to rally from love-40 and four service breaks down to hold serve in the opening game of the match.
Kvitova made no mistake second time around, belting a big groundstroke winner to break Stosur for a 2-1 lead before holding for 3-1.
Stosur battled hard to break back in the sixth game and, almost inevitably the set was forced into a tiebreak.
With a remarkably flawless 34-0 record after winning the first set in grand slam matches – and an unflattering 6-30 strike rate when she loses it – the tiebreak shaped as pivotal for Stosur.
Alas, Stosur squandered 3-0 and 5-3 leads in the breaker – both times when she was serving – and conceded the set on a scorching forehand winner from the fearless Czech.
The writing was on the wall for Stosur when Kvitova grabbed the decisive break in the sixth game of the second set.
Kvitova then calmly served out the match to leave Stosur’s fourth-round showings in 2006 and 2010 as her best efforts from nine visits to Melbourne Park.
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