Petra Kvitova will make her long-awaited return to tennis at this year’s French Open, just five months after she was stabbed during an attempted burglary at her home in the Czech Republic.
The two-time Wimbledon champion has been out of action since the December knife attack in her Czech Republic home, which severely injured her left, playing hand.
Emergency surgery — almost four hours long — helped repair damage to the Czech’s tendons and nerves and she has been battling back to fitness ever since.
On Friday, the left-hander was drawn against world No. 86 Julia Boserup in the first round of the tournament, which starts on May 28.
‘Chances of playing again was low’
“The injury was horrific,” Kvitova’s surgeon, Doctor Radek Kebrle, said in a press release.
“The chances of Petra’s hand healing well enough for her to be able to play tennis again were very low for multiple reasons. There were some good points and some bad ones.”
One of the drawbacks, Kebrle says, was that all five fingers were damaged, but Kvitova’s “long, thin, slightly hyperlax fingers” helped aid her recovery.
Kvitova was at home in the city of Prostejov, about 160 miles east of the Czech capital Prague, when an intruder burst into her apartment at around 08:30am on the morning of December 20.
The 27-year-old was able to fend the attacker off, who then fled, and later said she was “shaken, but fortunate to be alive.”
As part of her rehabilitation, Kvitova recently spent time training in the Canary Islands and said she was working “really hard” on her recovery.
The 19-time winner on the WTA Tour said her outlook on life had changed since the incident, and that she was doing everything she could to give herself a second chance back on court.
The last time Kvitova played competitively was for the Czech Republic in a Fed Cup tie against France on November 12 last year. She was knocked out of the 2016 French Open in round three by America’s Shelby Rogers.
Both her major titles came on grass at Wimbledon, in 2011 and 2014, and she reached a career-high ranking of world number two in October 2011.
Kvitova is currently ranked 16th in the world and will be making her ninth appearance at Roland Garros — her best showing came in 2012 when she reached the semi-finals.