Help me, Petra Kvitova, you're my only hope

The advantage to a blog versus writing in a newspaper is that I can write things like this: I don’t like Maria Sharapova. Plain and simple. She annoys the crap out of me. Therefore, I’ll be rooting for Petra Kvitova in Saturday’s Wimbledon final.

What do I dislike about Sharapova? Her I’m-violently-plunging-a-knife-into-another-human screams (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LawWhZcmV0) every time she hits the tennis ball are a great place to start. It’s almost unwatchable at times. I’m afraid to have the volume on Saturday for fear of terrifying my 14-month-old daughter. No living thing should make noises like that unless under severe duress, yet she does it when she hits a ball with a racket. Second, yelling “Come on!” after nearly every point, even opponent errors, is obnoxious and disrespectful. There are other, less tangible things that bother me about her (sense of entitlement, perhaps?), but the bottom line is, the next time I root for her in a tennis match will be the first.

Kvitova has the type of game that can challenge Sharapova on grass. So does Sabine Lisicki, but perhaps the moment of today’s Grand Slam semifinal was too much for the German in her 6-4, 6-3 loss to Sharapova. Kvitova is playing in her first final, so she may be awed by the occasion. But she’s clearly on the rise. At 21, she’s reached a career-high ranking of No. 8, and in her last five Grand Slam events, she’s reached a final (this one), a semifinal (2010 Wimbledon), a quarterfinal (2011 Australian) and the fourth round (2011 French). She’s made five finals this year — on three different surfaces — and won three of those. On Thursday, she rebounded after dropping the second set to decisively close out a very tough player in Victoria Azarenka. She’s a good player with a tough serve. She could win on Saturday.

I, for one, hope she does.