WIMBLEDON — Four summers ago, Barbora Krejcikova returned home to the Czech Republic and vowed to get serious.
With tennis on hold during the coronavirus pandemic, she embarked on a single-minded programme she believed was needed to transform her game.
Back in Brno, she dedicated herself to eating right, sleeping right and spent hours working on her conditioning, building strength and flexibility during long runs that took her deep into the countryside and home again.
When she returned to the court later that year, she quickly shaved 50 places of her world ranking, the following spring she won her first grand slam singles title at Roland Garros and rose to world No 2.
But belief has always been Krejcikova’s problem. Aged 18 her parents took her to visit Jana Novotna, who lived nearby and who won the title here in 1998, after two previous final defeats.
Novotna saw a lot of herself in the young Krejcikova, mentoring her through the early years of her career before she died of ovarian cancer at the age of 49.
“I never really felt like the player who was talented enough to make it and to win a slam,” she said.
“Jana and I used to talk a lot about her matches here and I hope she would be proud. I took a lot of inspiration from her after my junior career. I learned so much from how she behaved and what a champion she was.
“When I step on the court here, I’m just fighting for every single ball, because that’s what I think she would want me to do.”
There are plenty of similarities between Novotna and Krejcikova’s game styles, built on subtlety and nuance, and careers, where success has been tempered with injuries and disappointments.
Those struggles, in Krejcikova’s case, have forced her to develop a robust mental attitude to the game, and her obsession with Lego has been one of the building blocks.
“I have many of them actually,” Krejcikova said after the semi-final, revealing her coaching team had even been buying her them as a present.
“I like to do a lot of the architecture.
“I think I did some Milky Way couple weeks ago. I’m a fan of Harry Potter, so I did a couple of Harry Potter. I did the Dobby one.”
The real life fairytale though is the rise of Czech tennis of which Krejcikova has been just one success story.
In the 47 years since Virginia Wade became the last British woman to win her, there have been four Czech champions and seven finalists, Krejcikova joining a list that includes Martina Navratilova, Hana Mandlikova, Novotna, Petra Kvitova, Karolina Pliskova and last year’s winner Marketa Vondrousova.
“It’s very, very nice to be part of this, being back here in Wimbledon where we have a really huge history of other Czech tennis players winning or reaching very, very far,” she added.
Czech tennis might just be the envy of the world, producing a conveyer belt of talent that has nations with more resources scratching their heads, but the question remains, at what cost?
At last year’s championships their players won the women’s, girls and boys doubles competitions, in addition to Vondrousova’s success.
However, earlier this year the head of the Czech tennis federation, Ivo Kaderka, was one of 10 arrested as part of a fraud investigation into misuse of state funds at the governing body.
This was quickly followed by news that teenager Nikola Bartunkova, the runner-up in last year’s Wimbledon’s girls’ singles, had tested positive for trimetazidine, a metabolic modulator sometimes used as heart medication.
Both deny wrongdoing as investigations continue but there is no doubt a little lustre has been lost from the success, with Jan Stoces, viewed as the mastermind of Czech on-court success, appointed to help clean up the mess.
Stoces is a huge believer in the importance of doubles, claiming it sharpens all the skills needed to be competitive in singles, something perhaps others can learn from.
Krejcikova is the best proof of his concept, winning 10 grand slam titles in doubles, including four women’s trophies in major tournaments between 2022 and 2023 with Katerina Siniakova.
Their mysterious parting of ways after so much success, including Olympic gold in Tokyo, is still debated, fuelled by some frosty interactions in recent months.
“She wanted a different direction, it was her decision not mine. It’s more on her to actually approach me and to talk to me about it,” added Krejcikova.
Now she’s doing it on her own and she looks happier for it.