Ons Jabeur knew the drill. Having once again dropped a tight opening set to a former grand slam champion with a crushingly powerful baseline game, the moment had come to trust her instincts, to give free rein to her extraordinary talent. Iga Swiatek had not lost a set en route to the second week of Wimbledon but, like her fellow former French Open champion Garbiñe Muguruza, the seventh seed had no answer to Jabeur’s bewitching blend of power and touch. The Tunisian surged to a clinical 5-7, 6-1, 6-1 victory to become the first Arab woman to reach the quarter-finals at the All England Club.
It was billed as a battle of contrasts, a trial between the freewheeling abandon of Jabeur, with her outrageous drop shots, skidding sliced backhand and awkward mix of power and variety, and the more rehearsed and purposeful brilliance of Swiatek, all booming groundstrokes and boundless competitive appetite. But there are many ways to skin a cat, and Jabeur is familiar with most of them. Having struggled to convert her opportunities against Muguruza, who saved all but five of the 29 break points she faced, the 21st seed was in no mood for a repeat. Favouring firepower over finesse – although, inevitably, there was no shortage of the latter – Jabeur went toe-to-toe with Swiatek, shrugging off the disappointment of failing to serve out the first set at 5-4, converting all seven of the break points she created, and winning three-quarters of the points behind her first serve.
“It was a great match,” said Jabeur, 26. “I lost at the end [of the first set], 5-3, I had to close it, but then said, ‘Come on.’ I didn’t think getting angry would be the answer for me, so I just stepped in point by point and played my game. You have to change it up a little bit, everybody knows that I’m doing drop shots now, so I’ve got to change a little bit. But I didn’t feel the need to do any drop shots today, just a few times. Being aggressive was the key today, and that’s what I did. Movement on the grass can be difficult, so you make tricky shots or do like long slice and then short slice, you can make the opponent unsure where to go. I tried to use that, and it was the key. Doing that, with being more aggressive, is a great combination.”
Swiatek’s time will surely come. Having arrived in SW19 with only a single match win on grass under her belt, the 20-year-old had advanced to the last 16 in impressive style. The emphatic nature of the final score-line belies the closeness of a contest in which the junior Wimbledon champion of three years ago converted only three of her 15 break points. Swiatek, who found the court with just 46% of her first serves, cut an increasingly frustrated figure as the morning wore on, slamming the net cord with her racket and thrashing a ball into the net post as the match slipped away. One can only imagine what the watching Daria Abramowicz, the sports psychologist who has been so influential in her rise to stardom, made of it all.
“I had a great week last week,” reflected Swiatek. “Right now it’s pretty hard to actually see that because I just lost, but it’s tennis. You’re probably always going to lose the last match. You have to get used to it a little bit, because tennis is a bit frustrating. You can have a great week, but then lose and forget that you had a nice tournament. I’m trying not to do that. I’m trying to see how much I have learned and how I was feeling even before the first round. Winning just one match was a great achievement for me. This grass season is really a positive for me, and it gave me a lot. I hope I’m going to use that in future years.”
Swiatek favours an extreme western grip on her forehand, with the hand fully under the racket. The technique produces significant topspin, but makes it difficult to dig out ankle-high balls on a grass court. Few players are better equipped than Jabeur to exploit such a vulnerability and, as the Tunisian began on the front foot, capitalising on a nervous start from the younger woman to fashion an early break, Swiatek mishits were plentiful. But as the Pole slowly began to find her range from the baseline, using her power to pull Jabeur away from the centre of the court, a potential path to victory became clear.
The problem for both women was inconsistency. As momentum swung back and forth, Jabeur, serving for the set, saved three break points, the third with an extraordinary half-volley pick-up from a full-blooded Swiatek backhand. A hammer of a forehand from Swiatek brought up a fourth, and this time Jabeur double-faulted. With Swiatek serving at 5-5, Jabeur landed an exquisite drop shot off a return of serve. To the Tunisian’s dismay, Swiatek raced forward to steer a forehand winner around the net post, much as Jabeur had done against Muguruza in the previous round. Two crunching winners, one off either wing, secured a second break for Swiatek in the next game, and with it the first set. But two successive double faults in a row at the start of the second handed the initiative back to Jabeur, who conjured a wonderful backhand pass on the run to seal the break. A drilled forehand sealed another break two games later, a double fault once again proving costly for Swiatek, and Jabeur was on her way.
The Tunisian will face Aryna Sabalenka in the last eight after the second-seeded Belarusian finally broke her fourth-round hoodoo at the majors with a 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 win over Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan. “Of course, I’m really happy, but this is not my final goal,” said Sabalenka, who said she was close to tears in the final game. “I’m really happy that I finally broke this wall and I’m in the quarter-finals.”
Also through to the last eight for the first time is Ashleigh Barty, who came through 7-5, 6-3 against Barbora Krejcikova, the French Open champion. “It was an incredibly tough match,” said Barty, the world No 1, who recovered after falling behind to an early break. “Barbora has had an incredible year, she’s been one of the toughest players to beat. I’m just happy to come through in the end. I found some pretty good stuff when I needed it most.”
Angelique Kerber, the 25th seed and former champion, beat Coco Gauff 6-4, 6-4 on Centre Court. The German will face Karolina Muchova, the 19th-seeded Czech, in the last eight. Muchova battled past Paula Badosa of Spain 7-6 (8-6), 6-4.
Karolina Pliskova, seeded eighth, beat Russia’s Liudmila Samsonova 6-2, 6-3. She will now face Viktorija Golubic after the Swiss beat Madison Keys, the 23rd seed, 7-6 (7-3), 6-3.
But there was bad news for the British teenager Emma Raducanu, who was forced to withdraw from her match with Ajla Tomljanovic after experiencing breathing difficulties. “I am actually really kind of shocked,” said Tomljanovic, who was leading 6-4, 3-0 when Raducanu, who had been clutching her stomach, left the court with the trainer and a second medic. “It’s obviously so bittersweet because Emma must be really, really hurt if she came to the decision to retire. To play as a Brit at home, it’s unbelievable so I am really sorry for her because I wish we could have finished it. It’s sport – it happens – but I am really wishing her all the best.”