“Right now No. 1 is just a number,” Kvitova told Tennis Journal. “When I was pretty close [in 2012] it was still a number and I was focusing more on my game. But for the players it means a lot and everyone wants to be it. I [just] have to believe in myself.”Kvitova won her first Grand Slam title at the Wimbledon Championships in 2011 and followed up by winning the year-end WTA Championships that same year. Her performances throughout the year meant that most expected her to reach the No. 1 ranking by the beginning of the 2012 season. While Kvitova was interested in attaining the position, she had always stated that she was more concerned with improving her game and advancing. She even opted not to defend points in Brisbane and instead took part in the Hopman cup with partner Tomas Berdych. Once she lost to Maria Sharapova in the semifinals of the Australian Open a few weeks later, her hopes of attaining the No. 1 ranking evaporated as she continued to drop until she was seeded fourth at the French Open only a few months later. The World No. 7 has won two titles in 2013 and is participating in the WTA Championships next week, where she will look to replicate her performance from 2011.
To see all our predictions for upcoming matches, based on our machine learning model analysing results since 1960, see our tennis predictions page here.