Kvitova tops Bouchard for Wimbledon title
LONDON — Petra Kvitova won her second Wimbledon title in four years and denied Canada its first Grand Slam tennis singles crown by defeating Eugenie Bouchard in straight sets Saturday in the women's championship match.
The sixth-seeded Czech slammed an ace on her first serve of the match and hit 28 winners while overpowering the 13th-seeded Bouchard 6-3, 6-0 on Centre Court at the All England Club.
Kvitova, 24, won the first set in 32 minutes against the 20-year-old Bouchard, the first Canadian to reach a Grand Slam singles final. Kvitova then won the first seven points of the second set and never let Bouchard back into the match.
After a topsy-turvy season, which started with a first-round loss at the Australian Open followed by a third-round exit at Roland Garros, 2011 winner Kvitova regained her form on the grass at Wimbledon.
Kvitova, a left-hander, reached the final having lost just one set, against five-time champion Venus Williams in the third round, and she told reporters that win boosted her confidence for the rest of the tournament.
Other than Venus and her sister, five-time winner Serena Williams, Kvitova is the first woman since Steffi Graf to win more than one Wimbledon singles title. The German won the last of her seven Wimbledon championships in 1996.
A junior Wimbledon champion two years ago, Bouchard will move to a career-best No. 7 on the women's WTA tour when the new rankings are released in two days, while Kvitova will jump two spots to No. 4.
Bouchard, 20, grabbed most of the media attention in the past week. Her half of the draw opened up when Serena Williams lost in the third round and 2004 winner Maria Sharapova was beaten in the fourth round. Bouchard, who lost to Sharapova in a three-set semifinal at last month's French Open, reached the Wimbledon final without losing a set.
It was the first Grand Slam tennis final between two players born in the 1990s. With a combined age of 44 years, the players composed the youngest pair of finalists since Ana Ivanovic, 20, of Serbia beat Russia's Dinara Safina, 22, at the 2008 French Open.