Last summer, Marketa Vondrousova visited London as a tourist. She took in the usual stuff: St James’s Park, Big Ben, Leicester Square. Tennis? Not so much. With her left arm in a cast after undergoing wrist surgery for the second time in three years, Vondrousova’s experience of Wimbledon was limited to watching Miriam Kolodziejova, her friend and doubles partner, play in the qualifying competition.
At that point, the Czech had no idea if she would ever again recapture the form that propelled her to the French Open final in 2019 and won her an Olympic silver medal two years later in Tokyo. As her ranking plummeted, that uncertainty was apparently shared by her clothing sponsor, who ended a four-year association with Vondrousova when her contract expired at the end of last year.
Suffice to say that somewhere in Orgeon, a Nike executive will be clearing their desk tonight after Vondrousova, unseeded and unsponsored, defeated Ons Jabeur in straight sets to become the lowest-ranked Wimbledon champion in history.
The world No 42, who had previously won just two main draw matches on grass in her life, completed a fairy-tale run at the All England Club with a 6-4, 6-4 win over last year’s finalist Ons Jabeur, the Tunisian sixth seed. It was a victory so improbable that even Vondrousova struggled to take it in.
“I think it was the most impossible grand slam for me to win, so I didn’t even think of it,” said Vondrousova, the first unseeded women’s champion since the system was introduced in 1924. “When we came, I was just like, ‘Try to win a couple of matches.’ Now this happened. It’s crazy.
“I had a cast last year at this time. It was impossible. I was watching my best friend here playing qualies. I was a tourist here.
“When I was coming back, I didn’t know what’s going to happen, if I can play at this level again. I mean, this seems impossible. On grass, I didn’t play well before.”
The unexpected nature of Vondrousova’s presence in the final undoubtedly worked in her favour. In the final set of her quarter-final win over Jessica Pegula, the 24-year-old was a point away from falling 5-1 behind. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she went about her business against Jabeur like a woman playing with house money. Vondrousova recovered from 3-1 down in both sets and showed no hint of nerves until the final game, where she went 40-0 up only to double-fault on her first championship point. Moments later, the Czech lunged to stab away a final backhand volley and then collapsed to the grass on her back.
“I’m just so happy that I could stay focused,” said Vondrousova, who defeated Elina Svitolina, another crowd favourite, in the semi-finals. “It’s very tough. People are cheering and everything. When it was 40-0, I couldn’t breathe.
“I just was thinking to myself, ‘Just be over.’ I was like crazy nervous. It was such a relief when I put the match point in.”
Vondrousova’s elation was Jabeur’s heartbreak. The 28-year-old began the afternoon hoping to become the first Arab and African woman to win a major singles title. She ended it contemplating the devastation of a third straight defeat in a grand slam showpiece, having previously reached last year’s Wimbledon and US Open finals.
Twice a break up in the first set and once in the second, Jabeur struggled to cope with both the magnitude of the moment and Vondrousova’s rhythm-disrupting array of southpaw spins and changes of pace. Jabeur held points to win each of the first five games, but for every step forward she took there were two steps back. In the third game, she relinquished an early break with a pair of unforced errors; after missing a short ball at the start of the fourth, she betrayed the depth of her anxiety by whacking her thigh in fury.
While the strength of that reaction felt premature at such an early stage, it was hardly surprising that Jabeur’s emotions were running at a high pitch. Ranked 36 places above her opponent and significantly more accomplished on grass, where she has won two of her four titles, Jabeur was the clear favourite. She has made no secret of her ambition to win the tournament, and in defeating four former major winners on her way to the final, she appeared to have done the hardest part.
After defeating Elena Rybakina, the defending champion, and Aryna Sabalenka, the second seed, in the previous two rounds, her progress to the title round was accompanied by a sense of destiny. In a sense, though, those wins were part of the problem. After absorbing pace against two of the game’s biggest hitters, Jabeur faced the entirely different challenge of generating it. That dichotomy lay at the heart of her 31 unforced errors.
“I believe that it was a completely different match from the last three that I had,” said Jabeur, who also saw off Bianca Andreescu and Petra Kvitova in earlier rounds. “So maybe adapting to her rhythm was very difficult for me. Plus, the pressure and the stress of the final.
“I didn’t think she made a lot of mistakes. I thought she served good. I think she played maybe a perfect final.”
That was true enough, yet Vondrousova’s excellence was also magnified by Jabeur’s inability to find her usual fluency. From 4-2 up in the opener, the Tunisian won just two more points in the first set, a wretched sequence that left her battling history as well as Vondrousova. For all the resilience Jabeur showed to fight back against Rybakina and Sabalenka, the last woman to recover from a set down in the final three rounds of a major was Helen Wills Moody at the 1925 US Open. Briefly, it looked as though she might do it. But after a three-game flourish in which she looked more like her true self, Jabeur crumbled again, losing five of the last six games. She was consoled by the Princess of Wales in the aftermath.
Vondrousova’s victory continues a rich tradition of Czech success at the tournament, where past champions include Martina Navratilova, Jana Novotna and Petra Kvitova. The latest triumph was watched by both Navratilova, who is now an American citizen, and Jan Kodes, winner of the men’s title 50 years ago and an animated presence in Vondrousova’s box. Also seated among her team was Helena Sukova, five times a singles quarter-finalist at the All England Club and the winner of seven doubles titles.
Another important presence for Vondrousova was her husband of eight years, Stepan Simek, who flew in to attend the final after abandoning cat-sitting duties at the couple’s home in Prague. It was Simek that she called during a crucial rain delay against Pegula while the roof was closed (as it was here – a factor that, as she acknowledged, probably worked to her advantage), later crediting his calm words of encouragement for her victory.
“I think when I came to the box, he cried,” said Vondrousova. “I saw him after, and he cried a lot. I think that’s the first emotion I saw from him over the eight years.”
The contrasting emotions of the occasion were reflected in the two camps either side of match point. While Vondrousova’s younger sister wept as the champion closed in on victory, Jabeur’s husband and trainer, Karim Kamoun, was no more able than his wife to disguise his devastation in the aftermath.
“I think this is the most painful loss of my career,” said Jabeur, through a veil of tears, in her on-court interview. “It’s going to a tough day today for me, but I’m not going to give up. I’m going to come back stronger and win a grand slam medal.
“It was an amazing tournament for me, I wish I could have continued to the end. I want to thank my team for always believing in me and we’re going to make it one day, I promise you.
“It’s been a tough journey, but that’s tennis. I promise I’ll come back one day and win this tournament.”