Kvitova too hot for Collins after roof closed
Petra Kvitova has stormed into the Australian Open final under a closed roof on Rod Laver Arena after extreme conditions forced the tournament’s new extreme heat policy to be triggered.
The two-time Wimbledon champion reached her first major final in more than five years after beating unseeded American Danielle Collins 7-6, 6-0 on Thursday afternoon.
As the temperature soared towards 40 degrees in Melbourne and play was suspended on outside courts, the Czech eighth seed looked to be feeling the heat against Florida native Collins.
Kvitova seized control of the match soon after the roof was closed, however, at 4-4 in the first set and from there was too strong for an increasingly agitated Collins.
The 25-year-old world No.35 seemed unimpressed when tournament referee Wayne McEwen appeared on court to inform the players the roof was being closed, and her frustration grew further due to a malfunctioning net cord beeper.
The feisty Collins exchanged words with chair umpire Carlos Ramos during the first-set tiebreaker, unhappy that he had called for a point to be replayed when he had overturned a fault call from a linesperson and Kvitova had hit her return long.
Then, in the second set, Ramos - the umpire at the centre of Serena Williams’ controversial meltdown during last year’s US Open final - was again in Collins’ sights after the machine that identifies let serves began playing up.
First, Collins served an ace, only for Ramos to call a let because the beeper had wrongly gone off. Then when the machine went off again on the next point as she served, she approached the chair again. The serve had been wide but Collins believed that point should have been replayed as well.
“Why is it beeping? It’s malfunctioning,” she told Ramos. “You made me re-serve the [previous] point, even though I won it. Now I just hit the serve out and you’re not giving me the same.”
Ramos responded that he was turning the machine off as it was not working properly.
Kvitova’s appearance in the Australian Open final will be her first in a grand slam since she suffered gruesome injuries to her hand from a knife-wielding burglar at her home in Prague in December 2016.
“It means everything,” Kvitova said. “I actually was happier than the fans that the roof closed. I like to play indoors.”