"I'm pretty happy that I think those people are already looking to me as Petra, as a tennis player," Kvitova said this week in an interview with ESPN The Magazine, having recently re-entered the Top 10 and won her third title of the season.
The 28-year-old Czech found herself in the news for completely different and unwanted reasons in 2016, when she experienced a knife attack in her home in the Czech Republic that left her playing hand badly damaged. A year ago, she was just starting her comeback, having required hours of surgery and weeks of rehab just to allow her to again hold a racquet.
"When the attack happened, obviously it was big. It was on TV and in newspapers everywhere, and it's like a movie from Hollywood," she said. "Lying in the bed in the hospital and seeing it in the news felt pretty weird."
WATCH—Petra Kvitova's pre-tournament presser in Roland Garros: