Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic became one of the most unlikely Wimbledon champions on Saturday, beating Ons Jabeur, a trailblazing Tunisian, in straight sets.
Vondrousova, 24, became the latest in a long line of Czech-born women to lift the sport’s most important trophy, dating back to Martina Navratilova’s dominance at Wimbledon in the 1980s, after Navratilova defected to the United States.
Like Navratilova, Vondrousova is a left-handed player with a nasty slice serve that she used all afternoon in the most tense moments when Jabeur tried to take control of the game or make another comeback.
For Jabeur, the loss in a second Wimbledon final in a row, against an opponent who had performed far less than other women she beat on her way to the abyss of tennis history, was nothing short of heartbreaking. Jabeur has now lost three of the last five Grand Slam finals, just short of becoming the first woman of Arab descent and from Africa to win major championships in tennis.
Like most tennis players, Jabeur has long dreamed of winning Wimbledon and last year she used a picture of the women’s trophy as the lock screen on her phone.
Jabeur started quickly and repeatedly broke the serve of a nervous Vondrousova in the first set. She was in form to begin with, but leading 4-2 in the first set, she unraveled her forehand into the net and backhand drifted beyond the baseline.
Before she knew it, Jabeur was down a set and had lost her serve to start the second. For her part, Vondrousova did everything she had to do, keeping the ball in play, hitting her curling, spinning shots that were so unlike the power Jabeur had faced in her recent matches.
As Jabeur calmed himself down and even climbed to a new lead in the second set, at 3-1, it all went away again, as Jabeur struggled to find the field and sent too many balls into the center of the net.
She lost five of the last six matches and another woman from the Czech Republic was the Wimbledon champion.