Petra Kvitová, Czech tennis player
Petra Kvitová ( kə-VIT-ə-və, Czech: [ˈpɛtra ˈkvɪtovaː]; born 8 March 1990) is a Czech professional tennis player. Known for her powerful left-handed groundstrokes and variety, Kvitová turned professional in 2006 and has won 28 career singles titles, two of which are Grand Slam titles, the Wimbledon Championships in 2011 and in 2014. She also won a bronze medal while representing the Czech Republic at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Her career-high ranking of world No. 2 was achieved on 31 October 2011.
Kvitová first gained notice upon defeating then-world No. 1 Dinara Safina in the third round of the 2009 US Open. This was followed by her first Grand Slam semifinal appearance at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships where she came up short to eventual champion Serena Williams. Then, during her breakthrough season in 2011, Kvitová won her first Grand Slam title at the Wimbledon Championships, defeating Maria Sharapova in the final, thus becoming the first player of either gender born in the 1990s to win a Grand Slam tournament title, and was the only such player with a Grand Slam singles title to her name until the 2016 French Open, where Garbiñe Muguruza triumphed. At the end of the season, she won the WTA Championships, thus becoming the third player to win the tournament on debut, the others being Williams and Sharapova. She also helped lead the Czech Republic to victory in the Fed Cup final that same year, making it the Czech Republic's first Fed Cup title as an independent nation.
In 2012, Kvitová made the semifinals of the Australian and French Opens, and was crowned US Open Series champion. That same year, she also won the Hopman Cup alongside Tomáš Berdych. In 2014, she won her second and most recent Grand Slam title at the Wimbledon Championships, defeating Eugenie Bouchard in the final. In 2015, Kvitová achieved the feat of making the quarterfinals at all four Grand Slams during her career after advancing to her first quarterfinal at the US Open, where she lost to eventual champion Flavia Pennetta. In 2016, she won the WTA Elite Trophy in her first appearance at the tournament, thus becoming the first player ever to win both categories of year-end championships on debut. In 2019, she reached her first Grand Slam final in almost five years, at the Australian Open where she finished runner-up to Naomi Osaka.