At Wimbledon, anything—or everything—is possible for Petra Kvitova

WATCH: Our interview with Miami Open champion Petra Kvitova

“Everybody knows I like to play on the grass,” Petra Kvitova said this week. “It’s my favorite surface. I love it. Doesn’t matter where it is.”

Everyone also knows, no matter what the 33-year-old Czech may say, that she loves the grass a little more at Wimbledon.

All tennis players have a special place in their hearts for this tournament, because all players, no matter what part of the world they’re from, dream of winning it before they dream of winning anywhere else. But Kvitova has never made a secret of her passion for everything surrounding Wimbledon—the grounds, the village, and, of course, the Rosewater Dish handed to the women’s champion each year.

The most psychologically intense match I’ve ever seen live may have been Kvitova’s three-set win over another All England devotee, Venus Williams, on Centre Court in 2014. It was only a third-round contest, but both women knew they had a chance at the title. Williams was inconsolable after losing; it probably didn’t help that Kvitova, after escaping her 7-5 in the third, went win her second championship without dropping another set.

When she demolished Genie Bouchard in the final, 6-3, 6-0, it seemed as if Kvitova, then 24, would go on to win half a dozen Wimbledon titles. The 6-footer had a biting lefty serve and some of the easiest ground-stroke power on either tour. But since then, something hard to explain happened: Kvitova has reached the fourth round just once since. Coming into this year’s event, her Wimbledon record during that time is a less-than-legendary 10-7.

It’s not as if her game has fallen off the map everywhere else, either. During that time—despite suffering a harrowing attack in her apartment in 2016—she has won 19 titles, including four grass-court tune-ups for Wimbledon. She reached the Australian Open final in 2019 and the semifinals at Roland Garros in 2020. As a 33-year-old, she won the Miami Open this year for the first time, and she usually looks good going into major events, including this one. Last year Kvitova won the grass warm-up event in Eastbourne, before falling to Paula Badosa in the third round on Centre Court. This year she won another grass title in Berlin, and is now riding an eight-match win streak on the surface.

On Saturday, she made it eight in a row by surviving a long rain delay and a scrappy opponent in Natalija Stevanovic. Along the way Kvitova showed her penchant for wild swings in form, sometimes from one shot to the next. Much like Wimbledon itself, if Kvitova’s game came with a weather forecast, it would be “changeable.” Serving for the match at 5-4, she came up with the deftest half-volley imaginable to win one point, then turned around and double-faulted for the sixth time. But she made it through, leaning heavily on that lefty serve in the end.

“It was pretty challenging, I have to say,” Kvitova said in her customary matter-of-fact way. “I have to be pretty calm whole match. In the end of the day I made it somehow. But I should go probably a little bit more often to the net to finish it.”

She said she wants to serve better, and that she doesn’t see herself as a favorite for the title.

“I don’t really care about the favorites anymore,’ she said. “I’m happy to be in the second week, as you mentioned, first time after 2014. This is already a big achievement for me.”

So why has Wimbledon gone from being the place where Kvitova raises her game, to the place where she stumbles? While grass rewards power, it also rewards speed, and Kvitova is bound to have less of it in her 30s than she did in her 20s.

“I’m still getting older and older,” she said with a smile earlier this week.

According to her, age seems to have had another effect: Rather than motivating her the way it once did, playing at her favorite tournament makes her nervous.

“Other Grand Slams I’m more relaxed than I am here probably,” she says. “Every time I’m here I’m trying to be relaxed as well.”

“Not easy. I’m trying every time.”

Is this the year Kvitova keeps her momentum alive and goes deep again at Wimbledon? It won’t get easier. She’ll play Ons Jabeur next, a Slam contender who is five years younger than Kvitova, respectively. Jabeur can hit with pace, but can also mix in more variety than Kvitova normally does.

Still, with a game as changeable as Petra’s, anything—or everything—can happen.