As she closed in on victory against Diane Parry, Ons Jabeur rose to angle away a backhand overhead of such panache and athleticism that it drew audible gasps from the Centre Court crowd. Ever the entertainer, the livewire Tunisian raised a fist in celebration, gleefully drinking in the applause that flowed from the stands. Similar scenes may yet unfold on the final weekend.
If Wimbledon titles were won on outrageous talent alone, most of Jabeur’s rivals would probably just pack up and go home. The 27-year-old does things with a tennis ball that most can only dream of.
Her signature drop shots, delivered without warning from wherever on the court she feels inclined to hit them, are deadly, as Parry repeatedly discovered to her cost.
Similarly destructive is the Jabeur sliced backhand, which has a deceptive, almost mesmeric quality, the ball floating timelessly in the air before exploding into renewed life on contact with the turf, where it skids and spins wildly. Armed with touch, power and dexterity at the net, Jabeur has a shot for every occasion.
Yet grand slam titles are not won purely on shot-making ability, and Jabeur is still getting to grips with the skillset required to compile a run of seven consecutive victories over a grand slam fortnight. Last month, she went into the French Open as one of the favourites, having won the Madrid title and reached the final in Rome. Overplayed and overwrought, she lost in the first round to Poland’s Magda Linette. Jabeur, a trailblazer for Arab and north African women who carries the hopes of millions, conceded afterwards that the weight of expectation got to her. Yet she would not have any other way.
“Everybody is following me, expecting me to do better and better,” said Jabeur after her 6-2, 6-3 victory over Parry. “I hope I continue being that person that gives him what were they expecting. I’m just trying my best, you know, to break records, to really open the path for the next generation.”
Jabeur’s quarter of the draw has opened up invitingly. Madison Keys withdrew with an abdominal injury on the eve of the tournament. Danielle Collins, the seventh seed and a finalist at the Australian Open in January, fell to Marie Bouzkova in the opening round. Emma Raducanu, the US Open champion, went out in the second. Neither has a projected fourth-round meeting with Angelique Kerber materialised, the German former champion losing 6-4, 7-5 to Elise Mertens, the Belgian 24th seed, whom Jabeur will face on Sunday. The Tunisian is taking nothing for granted.
“I’m trying to keep focus,” she said. “I will have an even more difficult match for the next one, but I’m always ready. I’m just trying to play my game and keep it as simple as possible.
“I am playing the tennis that I love to see. Obviously, there’s a few things I want to improve. I want to be challenged for the next round, for sure, and see how I handle that pressure. For me, if sometimes I start playing [an event] not so good, I feel like at the end of the tournament I play better and better, when I get more matches and I get used to the courts, to the environment.”
Jabeur has a particular penchant for grass, on which she won her first title in Birmingham last summer before going on to reach the quarter-finals at the All England Club. This year she prepared for Wimbledon with a second grass-court title, this time in Berlin, before partnering Serena Williams in the doubles at Eastbourne, where things were going swimmingly until she pulled out ahead of the semi-finals as a precautionary measure, having tweaked a longstanding knee problem.
She seems fine so far, though, whistling through her opening round match against Sweden’s Mirjam Bjorklund in 54 minutes, and when she opened up a 5-0 lead against Parry in just 26 minutes it looked as though history might repeat itself.
But the French 19-year-old, ranked 77th and a former junior world No 1, has a fair few weapons of her own. While her natural preference is for clay – she grew up in the shadow of Roland Garros, where she defeated Barbora Krejcikova, the defending champion, in the first round six weeks ago – her elegant, free-flowing groundstrokes and natural athleticism translate well to any surface.
As she slowly came to terms with Jabeur’s trickery and the intimidating stage on which she found herself, Parry dug in to avoid a first-set whitewash. That laid the groundwork for her best spell of the match, as she traded groundstrokes with Jabeur and disturbed the third seed’s rhythm with her one-handed slice. Jabeur said afterwards that it had been difficult to get low to those shots, but it didn’t stop her racking up 14 consecutive points to see out the win.
In the biggest upset of the day, fifth seed Maria Sakkari was defeated 6-3, 7-5 by Tatjana Maria, a 34-year-old mother of two who had not won a main draw match at a major in four years until this week. Sakkari led 5-2 in the second set and later held two set points to level the contest, but Maria held firm to reach the fourth round at a grand slam for the first time. She will play Jelena Ostapenko, the 12th seed, after the Latvian came through 3-6, 6-1, 6-1 against Romania’s Irina-Camelia Begu.
Heather Watson maintained the feelgood factor surrounding the British challenge, following Katie Boulter’s win over Karolina Pliskova on Thursday, with a 7-6 (8-6), 6-2 victory over Kaja Juvan of Slovenia. The win takes the 30-year-old through to the last 16 for the first time in 12 attempts.
“I was surprisingly calm,” said Watson, who will face the unseeded German Jule Niemeier next. “I really believed that I was going to do it, even if it was a bit of fighting at the end.”