Barbora Krejčíková

Barbora Krejčíková - the doubles specialist who became a singles legend

There are certain moments that can change the direction of a career, and there are three in the career of Barbora Krejčíková.

The first came in 2014 and took place far from a tennis court. Krejčíková comes from Brno, the Czech city that was also home to the 1998 Wimbledon champion Jana Novotná. When Barbora was 18, she wrote a handwritten letter to Novotná, and went with her mother to Novotná’s house. She knocked on the door, but no-one was home, so she put the letter through the door. It told the former Wimbledon champion of the girl’s dreams, and asked if she could help her make them reality.

Out of that grew a mentoring relationship that lasted until Novotná’s untimely death from ovarian cancer in 2017 aged just 49. Jana worked with Barbora for a number of years, and always believed in the young player - long before Krejčíková herself did. Krejčíková is not always comfortable talking about Novotná, sensing the tears are never far away, but she’s grateful for her mentor’s assistance.

The second turning point came in 2020. Despite two Grand Slam titles in women’s doubles and two in mixed, Krejčíková’s singles ranking was still outside the top 100. She was 24 years old, and it appeared a successful singles career was just not going to happen. It had been more than a decade since her professional debut at a $25,000 tournament in Slovakia, yet she had played just one main draw match at a major.

Then Covid-19 happened. Roland-Garros was moved to late September, a number of players decided Paris in the chilly autumn months were not for them, and Krejčíková’s ranking of 114 was suddenly good enough to get her into the main draw for only the second time in 15 majors. It was the break she needed. She posted three wins, which took her singles ranking to levels that opened the doors to new tournaments.

That result sparked a remarkable career turnaround that, just eight months later, had Krejčíková holding aloft the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen as the 2021 Roland Garros women’s singles champion. She had built on her improved ranking by reaching the final of the tournament in Dubai in March, and the week before the crown jewel of the clay-court season, she won her first career WTA singles title in Strasbourg, France. Then, as the big names tumbled, the 25-year-old Czech was the last woman standing.

“I always wanted to play tournaments like this - big tournaments, big opponents, last rounds. It was always something I wanted to achieve. It was just taking so long,” Krejčíková said at the end of Roland-Garros 2021. “But I think right now it’s actually the right moment. Especially mentally, I think I’m just there. I really matured.

“Even if I tell myself I’m tired and I cannot do this anymore, or my legs are shaking or I’m not feeling well, I can still fight and I can still win,” she added. “This is something that, for sure, before Paris I didn’t know I actually had.”

Krejčíková followed up her French Open title with an emotional triumph on the hard courts of Prague (she says of that tournament, “I just thought I really, really had to come, just so they can see me, see that I’m real!”), and then collected an Olympic gold medal. She teamed up with Kateřina Siniaková, her compatriot with whom she had won seven major titles including a career Grand Slam, to claim the women’s doubles gold at the Tokyo Olympics held in 2021.

The third turning point came when she won a marathon first round match at Wimbledon in 2024. She had lost six first rounds in the first five months of the year, caused in part by getting Covid, a bacterial infection, and a back injury. She scraped one of the last seeds at Wimbledon but came up against another player ranked in the 30s. She could have gone out in the first round, but her 7-6, 6-7, 7-5 win released something in her, and she ended up winning the most coveted title in tennis, lifting the Venus Rosewater dish after winning the Wimbledon final.

Minutes later she was shown the honours board in the Wimbledon clubhouse, on which her name had been newly printed. She saw first her own name, and then that of the 1998 champion, Jana Novotná. Her eyes filled with tears. “The only thing that was going through my head was that I miss Jana a lot,” Krejčíková said. “It was just very, very emotional. An emotional moment to see me on a board right next to her.”

Whatever she achieves in the rest of her career, Krejčíková has a minimum of 12 Grand Slam titles - two in singles on wildly contrasting surfaces, a career Grand Slam in women’s doubles, and three Australian Open mixed doubles titles. Her variety of shot makes her popular among the aficionados who appreciate the subtleties of tennis, and her inconsistency seems to add to her mystery. “I’m still going to be the little girl from my little city, who started tennis by hitting on the wall,” she said. And somewhere, Jana Novotná is keeping an eye on her.

Words by Stephanie Myles