Bouncing on her toes inside the baseline, an eager Petra Kvitova was poised to pounce on any short serve. Even while waiting to return, Kvitova looked like a woman going places. Adopting an attacking posture from the coin toss, Kvitova crushed Greta Arn, 6-2, 6-1, in a first-round Roland Garros romp.
In her first tour-level match since sweeping three Top 10 players to capture her third title of the season in Madrid, Kvitova solidified her status as a player to watch in Paris. Granted, she was facing a woman whose last Roland Garros appearance came when Jennifer Capriati was defending champion and Kvitova was all of 12 years old. Still, Kvitova showed no nerves in her first major as a Top 10 seed, dictating play from the first point.
French fans celebrating qualifier Stephane Robert’s five-set upset of sixth-seeded Tomas Berdych on Court 2 fizzled away by the time Kvitova took the same court. The emptiness made Kvitova’s explosive game sound even bigger, as she blasted balls off the back walls like slam dancers crashing a mosh pit.
Even when Arn won, she lost. In the third game, Kvitova’s second serve was called out and Arn walked to her chair, believing she had broken, only to be pulled back on court when the chair umpire located the mark lounging on the line. The game continued and Kvitova coaxed successive errors out to hold for 3-0. Though she beat Maria Sharapova, Julia Goerges and Yanina Wickmayer to win Auckland in January, the 32-year-old Arn is not a shot-maker in Kvitova’s class, so she tried to play the percentages and grind. That was an exercise in futility.
There’s a lot to like about Kvitova’s game; her craft in opening up the court, the ability to hit several spots with her shots and her creative combinations were particularly effective as she powered to a 5-0 lead. Kvitova crunched bold backhands down the line and employed the Lindsay Davenport tactic of driving the backhand return right back at the server’s body, as if trying to embed the ball on Arn’s hip.
Arn’s fourth ace gave her a game point and she finally held for 1-5 when Kvitova sprayed a forehand wide. A fine forehand volley then gave Arn break point, and when Kvitova flattened a forehand into net, Arn broke for 2-5.
Shrugging off the two-game slide, Kvitova came right back to break at 15 and collect the first set in 37 minutes.
When Kvitova cracked a backhand winner down the line to break for a 3-1 second-set lead, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Serving for the match at 5-1, Kvitova squandered her first three match points but soon closed it out to raise her 2011 record to 30-6. Four of her six losses have come in first or second rounds, so this convincing opener should give Kvitova confidence for her second-round match with Zheng Jie, in a clash of former Wimbledon semifinalists.
—Richard Pagliaro