With powerful serves, delicate technique and iron determination, Petra Kvitová wrote tennis history. After 19 years on the tour, she now draws a line under her career.
For almost two decades, Petra Kvitová shaped international tennis – combining forceful play with quiet modesty and remarkable resilience. At 35, the Czech player has now ended her career, closing a chapter marked as much by triumphs as by painful setbacks.
Kvitová had already announced her retirement in June. “I’ve achieved more than I could ever have imagined,” she wrote on Instagram at the time. The US Open was to be her final appearance as a professional – and so it proved: at Flushing Meadows on Monday she fell in straight sets to the Frenchwoman Diane Parry, 13 years her junior, 1–6, 0–6.
On the Louis Armstrong Stadium’s video screen, the highlights of her career played out. Fighting back tears, Kvitová said: “It’s my last dance. It’s been a long and incredible journey.”
Her greatest successes came at Wimbledon, where she lifted the trophy in 2011 and 2014. Equally legendary was her contribution to the Czech Fed Cup team – today the Billie Jean King Cup – with which she triumphed six times. As a national figurehead, she carried the Czech Republic’s flag at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
The very top of the rankings, however, eluded her – her career high was world No. 2 in October 2011. The bitterest near-miss was at the 2019 Australian Open, when she narrowly lost to Naomi Osaka in a high-class final and with it the chance of reaching No. 1.
With 31 WTA titles in total, Kvitová ranks among the most successful players of her generation. Her last title came in Berlin in 2023. After that, life off court began to shift: in the summer of 2024 she became a mother, and in February 2025 she returned once more – but it was little more than a farewell tour.
