By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Monday June 28, 2020
World No.73 Sloane Stephens stunned two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova on Day 1 at Wimbledon.
Photo Source: Getty
It was a match we all circled when the draw came out. Two former Grand Slam champions, one a two-time Wimbledon champion hoping for a trio, the other carrying a ranking of 73 but hungry to recapture a slice of her former glory.
Mission achieved for World No.73 Sloane Stephens, who swept past No.10-seeded Petra Kvitova with a squeaky clean performance for the ages.
The American hit 12 winners against 14 unforced errors and broke Kvitova’s serve three times to notch her first ever Top 10 win at Wimbledon—and her second Top 10 win in her last two majors, after dispatching No.9-seed Karolina Pliskova in the second round at Roland Garros.
It has been a long road for Stephens, who has battled personal problems and health issues and has just started to improve her form over the last three months. She talked about that process after her win on Monday.
"I think when you're finding your game and trying to work your way back, I think a lot of it is just being positive and knowing that you've been at a certain level before and trying to get back there," she said. "I think for me the biggest thing was feeling good on the court, feeling like I'm competing like I'm in matches. Then obviously today, after French, I felt good. I felt like I was competing better. Even though obviously it didn't end the way I wanted it to, I was just feeling more like myself on court."
Kvitova has now been knocked out in the first round in two of her last three Wimbledon appearances, and four times overall.
She was only able to muster eight winners against 20 unforced errors to drop to 33-11 lifetime at SW19.
More to follow….