Petra Kvitova will not play tennis for 'at least six months', say surgeons
Earlier this week, two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova was attacked by a burglar in her apartment in Czechoslovakia. The 26-year-old, it later emerged, was left with serious finger injuries and severed tendons in her left arm, which is her racquet arm.
Read more: Kvitova attacked at home, suffers serious injuries
Kvitova underwent a lengthy three hour, forty-five minute surgery to minimize the damage, with doctors declaring yesterday that she would “likely see a return to tennis”, but did not put a timeline on the recovery period.
Now, Kvitova’s surgeons have said she will see a minimum six-month break from the sport, In an alleged statement to a Czech daily, surgeon Radek Kebrle, who worked on Kvitova, was quoted as saying "When we talk about (competitive) pressure on the hand, we are talking about a period of around six months (before that would be possible).”
Kebrle went on to say that the surgery “went very well, with no complications,” but it will be a minimum of three months before Kvitova is able to even grip a racquet properly.
In a statement issued through her management, Kvitova said "It is too soon to specify when precisely she can return to competition, but Petra is ready to do everything she can to get back competing at the highest level,"
The burglar, it emerged through investigations, posed as a utilities serviceman to gain access to the apartment.
While she has been largely positive about the road ahead, Kvitova will face a long task in recovery, both physically and mentally. Russian ace Anna Chakvetadze was en route to the top of the WTA ranks when she and her family were held at gunpoint, attacked and burgled in their Moscow home, an incident that Chakvetadze said led to her premature retirement – aged only 26 – from professional tennis.
Monica Seles returned to tennis after being stabbed in the back by a crazed fan of Steffi Graf during a tournament in Hamburg, but the American described the terrible experience as having affected her for life.
In a statement on social media, Kvitova said she ‘looked forward to her return.’