Petra Kvitova outlasted the unseeded Kiki Bertens to win a thrilling Madrid Open final on Saturday (May 12) 7-6(8-6) 4-6 6-3 and become the first player to lift the trophy for a third time.<\/p>\n
Czech Kvitova, ranked 10th in the world, struck the first blow in a tense match which lasted two hours 52 minutes by edging the tie-break at the end of a grueling 75-minute first set, taking advantage of a third set point when Bertens found the net.<\/p>\n
The Dutchwoman had beaten Caroline Wozniacki and Maria Sharapova in a sparkling week in the Spanish capital to reach her first premier mandatory final and recovered well from surrendering the first set to take the second.<\/p>\n
She led by a break in the third but let her advantage slip and Kvitova broke twice in a row to take a 4-2 lead in the decider.<\/p>\n
Bertens broke back to make it 4-3 but lost her next service game and Kvitova served out the final game to love, sealing victory when Bertens hit the tramlines with a backhand.<\/p>\n
In doing so, she took her landmark third title, surpassing the two each won by Serena Williams and Simona Halep in Madrid, which established a women\u2019s section in 2009.<\/p>\n
Twice-Wimbledon winner Kvitova was forced out of action for more than five months last year after her racket hand was stabbed by a burglar who broke into her apartment in December 2016.<\/p>\n
But she has returned with a vengeance, winning the St Petersburg Ladies Trophy, the Qatar Total Open and the Prague Open this year before making history in Madrid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Petra Kvitova outlasted the unseeded Kiki Bertens to win a thrilling Madrid Open final on Saturday (May 12) 7-6(8-6) 4-6 6-3 and become the first player to lift the trophy for a third time. Czech Kvitova, ranked 10th in the world, struck the first blow in a tense match which lasted two hours 52 minutes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30900,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30899"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30901,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30899\/revisions\/30901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}