In three fast-paced and wildly entertaining sets, Petra Kvitova overcame Li Na 7-5, 2-6, 6-3 to claim the Montreal title tonight.
When two players, both in good form, whose games are predicated on the relentless deployment of similar weapons confront each other across the net, the match becomes simultaneously a question of executing well and stepping outside one’s comfort zone. It was strange to see Li Na, one of the hardest hitters in the women’s game, driven back on to her haunches to redirect the ball like Agnieszka Radwanska two or three times in a point; equally strange to see the usually placid-to-a-fault Kvitova red-faced and fired-up, scrambling madly in defense. The Li Na who took the court tonight would have beaten almost anyone, but in the end Kvitova held her nerve and forced the match on to her own terms just enough to take the title. It is the 2011 Wimbledon winner's first title of the year and her first championship on North American soil.
In a fluctuating first set in which both women had to save a break point in their opening service games, Li Na struck first when Kvitova, serving at 1-1, went for three consecutive winners down the line and missed them all. With Kvitova putting each return on to her opponent’s shoelaces, Li Na’s second shot became paramount and she absorbed and redirected the ball beautifully to consolidate, but the momentum swung again when she couldn’t secure the double break despite three double faults from Kvitova at at 1-3. Kvitova broke twice with her trademark huge, crunching winners into the corners and served for the set at 5-3 before being broken again. Any ball that landed more than a few inches inside the baseline was being mercilessly punished and as Li Na served at 5-6, it was Kvitova who managed to elicit those slightly shorter balls and stepped inside the court to wear her opponent down in an intense rally for the first set.
A fatal drop in intensity from Kvitova saw Li Na take full advantage, winning the first four games of the set and 16 straight points to be two-thirds of the way to a Golden Set, a prospect no crazier than the standard of tennis on display throughout. Keeping Kvitova to a total of two winners for a set is impressive enough, but Li Na was impenetrable as the Czech started to strike back, serving out the 6-2 set.
In the third, serving more accurately and cutting down the errors, Kvitova displayed qualities not normally associated with her, chasing balls down with frenetic determination and forcing the 10th-seeded Chinese to play one more shot. It got her the break for 4-2 as Li Na shanked that one extra forehand long and Kvitova continued to peel off the winners to take the match.
The statistics make strange reading — both women served at 65 percent, hit 3 aces and made 43 unforced errors, with Li Na striking 9 more winners than her opponent — and they don’t make it sound like a good or entertaining match. It was, but it was more than that. It was frenetic, high-risk, first-strike aggressive tennis taken to another level and an ominous performance by Kvitova ahead of the U.S. Open.