LONDON—The coin came up tails and Maria Sharapova chose to receive. For a few minutes, it appeared to be a tactical stroke of genius. Petra Kvitova, a rookie when it came to Grand Slam finals, walked out and promptly dropped her opening service game. But by the middle of the first set, Sharapova’s ploy had begun to look like a desperation move, a futile attempt to hide the fatal flaw known as her own serve.
The two players traded breaks and holds, winners and errors, until Sharapova took the ball at 2-3 and the score went to 30-30. That was the moment when her serve, so shaky since her shoulder surgery, so shaky in her last round, abandoned her for the last time. She double-faulted twice to be broken. Sharapova turned around, looked at her strings, and shook her head nervously, as if to say: “Please, not now, not here.”
But it was now, and it was here, on Centre Court, with the world watching. Most important, it was with a very talented young player, with the power and skill to exploit any opening, standing on the other side of the net. That opponent, a 21-year-old native of the Czech Republic already primed to win big, took it from there.
There were nerves and mistakes and misfirings, but that was to be expected. For the most part, Kvitova had it all going, and she showed off an arsenal that was superior to her opponent's in both strength and variety. She clipped the sideline with her wide serve in the ad court. On the deuce side, she slid that same lefty delivery into Sharapova’s hip. Her hook forehand crosscourt was lethal, as was her reflex backhand down the line. On both her serve and her return, Kvitova had Sharapova lunging, lurching, and scrambling back and forth along the baseline. Kvitova also had a shot, an important shot, that her more experienced opponent didn’t own, a backhand slice that she used to change pace and trajectory.
Kvitova won the first set 6-3, but we had seen her win first sets in the last two rounds only to give them back. And she tightened up this time as well. The (extended) moment of truth came from 3-2 to 4-3. Kvitova, serving and up a break in the first of those three games, stoned two easy balls well wide and was broken. There were flashbacks around the stadium to the previous afternoon, and Andy Murray’s now infamous missed forehand in his own second set.
But Kvitova snuffed out those terrifying memories in the next game when she went back up a break at 4-3—Sharapova helped by slowing her own momentum with another double fault. After the last point of that game, Kvitova shook her first at her team, with a look of self-assured determination—she wasn’t here to lose a close match and get her feet wet; she was here to win.
Still, in the following game, Kvitova sailed a backhand long to go down 15-30. Sharapova pumped her fist and let out an ominous “Come on!” It felt like now, at long last, the turnaround had come. Then . . . Sharapova missed three easy returns of serve to give the game, and the match, away.
The Russian had fought for years to get back to this place, her favorite place, Centre Court on the final Saturday. But the flaw that had kept away for so long did her in once more. She couldn’t count on her serve, and by the end that tentativeness had spread through her game. She had escaped with 13 double faults in the last round, but Kvitova was too good to allow another Houdini act.
Kvitova won it in style, with her first ace of the match. That type of dramatic capstone to a victory has been a trademark of two other lefty champions: Jimmy Connors and Rafael Nadal. Kvitova isn’t as outwardly fiery as either of them, but there’s a sense of bedrock calm and confidence about her. And why wouldn’t there be? Like the rest of us, she can see that she has the bigger shots, that she controls the rallies, that she has the match in her hands against virtually anyone she plays.
Kvitova had the bigger game again today; it may even a game that represents the next step in terms of power and first-strike assertiveness in women's tennis. This match felt not unlike Sharapova's own ambush win at 17 over Serena Williams here in 2004, the announcement of a new champ. While there were miscues and nerves amongst the winners, you get the sense that those will fade as the wins continue. You got the feeling, when her last thudded serve touched down and hit the backstop, that it didn’t just mark the end of Kvitova’s first Grand Slam win. It marked the beginning of a new tennis star’s now-inevitable ascendance.
—Steve Tignor