Petra Kvitova def Tsvetana Pironkova 6-3 6-7(5) 6-2
The Kvitova-Pironkova match should have been on center court. It was a battle between Wimbledon 2010's two losing semifinalists. However, the AELTC decided to put this match on Court 1 so that Maria Sharapova could defeat Dominika Cibulkova with a double breadstick.
The match started out like I thought it would. Kvitova raced ahead breaking Pironkova's serve and holding her own. She got to a 5-1 lead before Pironkova staged a mini comeback broke Kvitova's serve before Kvitova closed out the set 6-3.
Then it all started to go wrong for Kvitova. She lost the next set 6-7 getting broken along the way. However, she regrouped and won the third set 6-2.
Pironkova didn't really do anything wrong in the match. She was able to stretch Kvitova to three sets using her varied play. Pironkova got a lot of balls back, and her slice stayed low and got her a lot of errors from Kvitova's racket. So she can tell herself that she still had an amazing Wimbledon reaching her second consecutive quarterfinal and going out in style.
Kvitova can take some positives from the match as well. Although she didn't win the second set, she was able to improve her game slightly before the third set. However, she does need to work on a plan B. When things weren't going her way in the second set, she continued to make silly error after silly error. She also needs to work on her net play some more as she gave away some silly points at net. Other than that, she can go into her next match knowing that she plays Azarenka. Azarenka doesn't have the weapons to overpower Kvitova like Serena did in 2010, and she doesn't have the variety to annoy Kvitova like Pironkova did. Hopefully Kvitova doesn't choke since she has a great chance to get to the finals of a major and win it.
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