Petra Kvitova vs. Yanina Wickmayer – Fourth Round Preview: Wimbledon Championships 2011
World number eight, Petra Kvitova of Czech Republic, continues her impressive run at the Wimbledon Championships this season and will face the 19th ranked Belgian, Yanina Wickmayer, in the fourth round of the tournament
on Tuesday.
The much awaited contest will be played at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon, London, England, with the winner of the match getting a place in the quarter-finals of the third Grand Slam tournament of the
year.
Seeded eighth in the tournament, Kvitova has been a demolishing force throughout the competition and is yet to lose a set. She crushed all of the opponents she met en route to the fourth round in straight sets, hinting her aggressive
game play and blistering form. The Czech competitor took down the 29th seed Italian opponent, Roberta Vinci, 6-3, 6-3, in the third round of Wimbledon to meet Wickmayer in the pre-quarter-final round.
On the other hand, Wickmayer went through some tough time before she upset the 12th seed Russian, Svetlana Kuznetsova in her last match to reach the fourth round. The Belgian overcame Kuznetsova in the third set, settling
the final score at 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, recovering from a deficit of one set and turning the tables on the Russian eject her out of the mega event.
The 21-year-old Belgian has been toiling hard for victories in the opening three round of the tournament. She took the second round match 3-6, 6-4, 6-2, against the unseeded Georgian, Anna Tatishvili, again dropping the opening
set first up. Wickmayer might not get any chance to recover after dropping a set against an in-form player like Kvitova, who has not lost a single set in the three matches she played at Wimbledon this year.
The two contestants have been in singles encounters against each other on multiple occasions but have competed at Wimbledon before. The eighth seed Kvitova have recently registered two victories over Wickmayer in the running WTA
(Women’s Tennis Association) season. She first defeated the Belgian in Paris to reach the quarter-finals of the event and then again in the Fed Cup ties to bring victory to her side. The all-time head-to-head series between the two players is levelled at 3-3
but the two recent victories of Kvitova certainly give her the required confidence booster for the upcoming matchup on Tuesday.
Being the eighth seed in the tournament, the Czech can be reckoned as the favourite for the fourth round encounter against Wickmayer but the Belgian is among the most unpredictable tennis players and can be very perilous for any
top class player on her day. Kvitova was the semi-finalist at Wimbledon last year, when she lost to the defending champion, Serena Williams, in straight sets 7-6(5), 6-2, in her first ever Grand Slam semi-final.
It the first time for Wickmayer to have made it this far here and it will be interesting to see how the young Belgian will tackle the immense pressure of competing against world number eight on the greatest of all stages in the
tennis world.
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