Over the past three weeks, taking in Stuttgart and then Madrid has been an interesting exercise in observation. A year ago, I recall sitting in the media access session with a defensive-looking Kvitova. The answers were stock and short. Yes, she was looking forward to the new season. No, this did not feel like real clay because it is fast and indoors. Yes, the Porsche looks nice.

I cannot have been the only one who was shocked at the news this year that just a couple of months into the new season, she was taking time off for exhaustion. Her season had not been that bad, when you look at some others.

So it was with some trepidation that I took my seat with the press at this year’s Stuttgart pre-tournament press conference and sat open-mouthed (figuratively speaking) as she described how this was not just a “wake up and not feeling it” moment but something that had been building for quite some time. She said that her coach had been the one to suggest it, and that she loved not thinking, living, breathing tennis for a while.

It was her openness that stood out. She shyly smiled as she explained the circumstances behind the decision, and how she enjoyed nothing better than to do absolutely nothing to do with tennis.

“In the beginning of the season it was okay but in Sydney I started to feel these weird symptoms that I was playing but I didn’t really feel any excitement,” she told us. “I was feeling empty. And I won a match 6:4 in the quarterfinal, I didn’t have any feelings, I wasn’t really happy, I just was ‘okay, good, semifinal tomorrow’, and I started to talk with my coach David [Kotyza] and tried to explain what it is.”

She continued, “He said that he sees a little bit the same as me what is inside. He knows me well, so I didn’t have to explain that much, but it was really difficult. It didn’t help in Melbourne and Dubai. Doha it’s nothing to say about. So I’m glad that I took the break and had a nice time. I didn’t think about tennis.”

Emboldened just a couple of weeks later, when a gaggle of us were taken to the Players Lounge after her opening win, I followed up an intern’s question of whether she was friends with the clay. I suggested she was maybe not at the dating stage yet, and it became a running theme during her press conferences.

Even the day I decided not to ask her about it, she smiled and came up with the quote all by herself. It seems the break had done her a world of good not only in terms of falling in love with her tennis again, but also interacting with all the elements that go with being a tennis player.

She is not the only one. Simon Halep also admitted that just last year, the thought of sitting with the press would ‘stress her out,’ but she was stunned to come up from a late finish to see a gaggle of press in Stuttgart sitting patiently, joking amongst ourselves as we waited to interview her.

Even when Kvitova won her second Wimbledon title, she freely admitted that the first time around, she had been simply unprepared for the level of attention that came with it.

What of the attention that comes with the comeback? Asking Serena Williams what she had thought of Kvitova’s decision to step away from the tour, she said:  “I think it's admirable that she said it and talked about it.  It's so understandable.  It's a grind.”

Williams elaborated further the following day, after being hit off the court by Kvitova in the Madrid semifinal:  “Most people don't do it.  Most people play through it and maybe go down a level or don't play well because they really need to take some time off. They end up losing confidence and not playing as good as they can.  She was wise enough to realize that she needed a break, and she was able to be able do well.”

What we saw in the final on Saturday was ‘Peak Petra’ – the kind that obliterated WTA Angel-elect Genie Bouchard in her Wimbledon final debut. This was not Petra’s beloved grass, but she was certainly giving clay the come-on (or should that be ‘pojd’?).

So when I got the mic and geared myself to ask, ‘So now do you think you are dating the clay?’ she admitted that what she was doing was her game, and not even giving any quarter to the slippery dirt.

To give her credit, she was painting the lines and hammering home winners so convincingly that if you stared at the sun directly and then squinted, you would swear the red had turned green.

When Kvitova is in the zone, she can batter the fluff off the ball better than some of the men, I would wager. Her use of angles, putting in dropshots, and joking afterwards that ‘it worked’ gave rise to a whole new character from the shy woman from Bilovec.

Would you bet against her to give her fellow elite clay court queens a good run for their money? Well I, for one, would take a jar of dirt out for a meal for that, and add Kvitova to the list of favorites for the French Open.