Tennis is better when Petra Kvitova and Dominika Cibulkova are playing well

“Sometimes you’re just going along for the ride,” Johanna Konta said with a laugh earlier this week in Wuhan, when she was asked what it’s like to play—and lose to—an in-form Petra Kvitova.

The Kvitova ride has always been a roller coaster; there are ups, downs, bumps, free falls, uphill climbs and unexpected loop de loops. Until this week, though, her 2016 season had hardly been worth the price of admission. Kvitova picked up a bronze medal in Rio, but she hasn’t won a tournament, she lost in the second round at Wimbledon—her favorite event—and after five straight years in the Top 10, she’s currently ranked just 16th. And the one place where she had always been steady—her coaching setup—suddenly turned unstable this season. Kvitova split with longtime mentor David Kotzya in January, and earlier this month she fired his replacement, Frantisek Cermak. It seemed possible that, at 26, Kvitova may have begun her career descent.

For the moment, though, she’s happy to have landed in China. While some top players dial it back in the fall, Kvitova hits the accelerator when she gets to Asia. In 2013, she won the title in Tokyo. In 2014, she won Wuhan and reached the Beijing final. Now she has put together her best week of 2016 to make the Wuhan final again. Her run has included a classic, three-set, three-hour victory over world No. 1 Angelique Kerber, and her first win over Simona Halep, in a 6-1, 6-2 blowout. In that one, the Kvitova coaster was rolling straight downhill; when that happens, all you can do is get out of the way and hope she derails.

“She hit the ball very strong and with power,” Halep said. “She didn’t miss.”

Kvitova finished with 34 winners and 16 errors against an opponent she had never beaten before. More impressive, perhaps, was the thorough and focused way she competed against Kerber. You might think that Kvitova’s best chance against a more consistent player like the German would be to pull the trigger as quickly as possible. Instead, Kvitova was willing to play Kerber at her own game and rally patiently. She hit toward the middle of the court and waited for her opportunities, and that patience paid off with a potentially season-changing win.

“That was a great match, for sure,” Kvitova said. “I didn’t really know what I should expect of myself before the tournament.

“This match showed me a lot about how good I can play again.”

Tennis is better when a big hitter like Kvitova is making her shots, rather than missing them. It’s also better when a spark plug like Dominika Cibulkova, Kvitova’s opponent in the Wuhan final, has found her spark again. She has done that and a lot more this week. Over the last 36 hours, Cibulkova has beaten Karolina Pliskova, Barbora Strycova and Svetlana Kuznetova, and four of her five wins this week have gone three sets.

“I’m really tired right now,” Cibulkova said after finding a way past Kuznetsova. “The feeling to be in the final is unbelievable, and that’s why I love it.”

It would have been easy for Cibulkova, who lost the first set to Kuznetsova, to fade away and call it a (good) week. But that’s not Domi’s style; have you ever seen her give less than her all during a match, a game, a point, a shot? The 27-year-old missed five months in 2015 after having foot surgery, but she has bounced back with more all-surface energy than ever in 2016. This year Cibulkova has won titles in Katowice and Eastbourne, reached finals in Madrid and Acapulco, and pulled out one of the best matches of the year, over Agnieszka Radwanska, to make the Wimbledon quarterfinals. She’s up to No. 12 in the rankings.

“I’m a good player,” Cibulkova said this week. “I can beat top players. But I was missing consistency in my game. This is the first year that I’m really consistent playing the whole year.”

Does Domi have enough left to stop the Kvitova train? The Czech leads their head to head 4-2, but the Slovak has won the last two. Whatever the result, Kvitova and Cibulkova have taken tennis fans on two very different, but equally entertaining, rides this week. Along the way, they’ve shown the value of Wuhan’s deep field. Who needs the Top 10 when No. 12 and 16 are playing like this?