“Linda is unflappable,” Ivana once explained. “She has this temperament from my husband. I think this trait is a big part of her success. She just doesn’t care. Whether it’s break point or match point, she’s always calm. It’s not that it doesn’t matter to her, but she can detach herself from it.”

On Saturday at the All England Club, the 21-year-old Czech demonstrated the truth of those words. 

Facing her compatriot Karolina Muchova in the Wimbledon final, Noskova stormed into an apparently unassailable lead only to suffer a catastrophic second-set collapse as Muchova, belatedly rousing herself, survived five championship points to force a deciding set. 

It was a devastating blow for Noskova, one that inevitably recalled the Centre Court implosion against Steffi Graf that left Jana Novtona weeping on the shoulder of the Duchess of Kent in 1993. But she would not allow her title challenge to be defined by it. Instead, remarkably, Noskova calmly regrouped to crown an afternoon of high drama and high emotion with a 6-2, 5-7, 6-3 victory that earned her a first grand slam title. 

The one sadness was that her mother, who died from cancer two summers ago, was not there to witness it. Afterwards, as Noskova thanked her watching father, Drahoš Nosek, together with the rest of her family and team, Noskova ensured she was not forgotten.

“There is also one more person I would like to thank, which is my mum,” said the Czech, her voice trembling. “I definitely would not be standing here without her, so thank you.”

‘Sad years, happy years, sweat’: what shaped Linda Noskova’s Wimbledon win

After blowing a kiss skywards, Noskova briefly reflected on “all the sad years, all the happy years, all the sweat and blood put into this”. It was a nod not only to her own dedication, but also to the sacrifices made by her parents as they strove to foster her talent on limited resources. To the years when the family was split asunder as Noskova’s ambitions took her from the bucolic village of Bystřička, where she grew up, to the city of Prerov, an hour’s drive away, where her mother cleaned offices to make ends meet while Drahoš remained at home, where he worked for a railway firm. 

“It was all worth it,” reflected Noskova.

That much is undeniable. Noskova becomes the third Czech champion in four seasons, following the victories of Marketa Vondrousova in 2023 and Barbora Krejcikova a year later. She is also the youngest winner since 2011, when Petra Kvitova defeated Maria Sharapova. Both were on hand to witness the occasion from the Royal Box, where nine-time champion Martina Navratilova was also among the usual glittering array of luminaries. 

The scrutiny could not have been more intense and, for the first half of what would be, at two hours and 28 minutes, the third longest women’s final in history, Noskova met the challenge head on. Her serve, the destructive fulcrum of her run to the final, was once again near-flawless. Noskova navigated the opening set without facing a break point, dropping just a single point behind her first delivery, while her smooth power and impressive movement allowed her to dictate the baseline exchanges. In the rare moments she wasn’t exceptional, Noskova was rock solid.

How Karolina Muchova struggled in her second major final

The same could not be said for Muchova. It is widely acknowledged that, on her day, the 29-year-old has the tools to defeat any player in the world. Here, however, she struggled to find her range in the face of Noskova’s excellence. By the time she did, the cause was all but lost. In that sense, Muchova’s second grand slam final mirrored her first, at the 2023 French Open, where she fell behind by a set and a break against Iga Swiatek only to force a decider after her game belatedly clicked into gear.

You would have got long odds on history repeating itself with Noskova leading 6-2, 5-2. Muchova had struggled throughout to summon the free-swinging power on her forehand that got her over the line from match point down against Coco Gauff in the semi-finals (a feat of escapism she also performed against Aryna Sabalenka at the same stage of her final run at Roland Garros, curiously) and as she served to stay in the contest, that wing once again faltered. 

Muchova twice survived after netting forehands to present Noskova with championship point; by the time she saved a third with a beautifully executed drop shot, the mental and emotional shackles were visibly starting to loosen. Her serve was gathering force. She was moving with newfound freedom. The variety and creativity that make her so dangerous were finally starting to flow. At the other end of the court, the opposite was happening. 

“It was very tough for me,” Noskova later reflected. “My hand kind of froze at certain moments. My feet were not as quick as they had been before.”

‘That’s insane’: Linda Noskova’s battle to remain in the second set

Up to then, moments of peril had been rare for Noskova – and when they came, she had been ready. Facing her first break points of the afternoon early in the second set, she snuffed out the danger with bold, decisive serving. As Muchova threatened to prolong the contest, she did so again. Noskova had already fended off two break points by the time Muchova nailed a glorious backhand winner to bring up a third. The younger woman responded with a thumping 112mph ace; then, when an error gifted Muchova a fourth opportunity, she produced another. 

“That’s insane,” mouthed the watching Navratilova.

Not so insane that Noskova couldn’t do it again, sending down an untouchable 114mph delivery to complete a stunning triptych of aces. Indeed, it was not until Muchova’s seventh break point that Noskova finally yielded, sending a forehand wide. By then, a double fault had cost her a fourth championship point, and a fifth would go begging in the next game. It was a torrid sequence for Noskova, one that would culminate with the loss of five straight games. Coming from a woman who normally wears the mask of impassivity so lightly, the anguished cry she emitted as the set slipped away spoke volumes.

So too did the manner in which she put her fingers over her ears as Centre Court rose to acclaim Muchova’s fightback. Yet, if Noskova’s impulse was to block out the reality of the moment, moments later she would be confronted by it in the most palpable form. As she retreated for a bathroom break, the Czech was greeted by the sight of the Venus Rosewater dish, the trophy awarded to the champion. Beside it sat the more modest silver plate awarded to the beaten finalist. Noskova’s resolve hardened.

Linda Noskova: ‘I’m going to leave my soul on court’

“The first step I took off court, the trophies were there,” said Noskova. “I was ​looking at the big one. I was like, ‘I’m taking this one, no matter what. I’m going to leave my soul on court.’”

If Noskova was replenished, Muchova was depleted. It had taken a monumental effort to restore parity. The momentum was hers but, after an exacting semi-final win over Gauff, did she have the physical and emotional reserves to capitalise?

“I think I started really slow,” Muchova reflected. “On the other hand, Linda started really strong, really good serving games. She played really fast. I was kind of looking for myself. It took a lot of power and strength out of me, I would say, to get back in that second set. I gave it my all. 

“The people were cheering on me; I felt it, I felt the support. I felt the momentum in the second set. It was definitely nice that it happened. It took, as I said, some strength out of me.”

As is so often the case in tennis, the opening game of the set was pivotal. Noskova had to stem the tide of games against her. Three break points for Muchova instead threatened to continue the surge. But Noskova held firm and, in the next game, some solid defending earned her a break. The tone was set; she would not be caught.

Noskova: ‘I think she would be proud’

Two years after her mother died on the eve of Wimbledon, Noskova’s victory was punctuated by a palpable sense of catharsis. No two people experience the anniversary of a parent’s death in the same way, but for most it is a time freighted with deep personal significance. So it appears to have been for the Czech, who revealed afterwards that her mother had been on her mind on the eve of the final. As a final service winner confirmed her triumph and she fell to the grass, her body heaving with emotion, those thoughts surfaced anew. 

“I had a moment yesterday night when I was thinking about her,” said Noskova. “Sadly, she passed away two years ago, at the beginning of the tournament. So just to be sitting here and looking at the title two years later, it was a big moment for me. But I think she would be proud. I think I made her happy today.”

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It was an outstanding performance from the 27-year-old, who drew on the full breadth of her substantial skillset, dictating the baseline exchanges with her bold ball-striking and rhythm-disrupting variety, defending brilliantly and weathering the storm that came her way as Gauff forced her way back into contention in the second set.

“Definitely I was coming to the court [thinking] that I can win, that I will let her play as much as I can, let her see that I’m fighting, and I think I really did this well,” said Siniakova. “In the end I kind of took that she doesn’t feel so well on the court, and I think that was the key, that I just let her play as much as I could.”

Granting Gauff licence to play is hardly the most obvious strategy, yet the strength of Siniakova’s conviction was evident from the moment she pounced on a high backhand to snatch a break in the opening game. The former doubles No 1 denied Gauff an immediate opportunity to break back with the first of several exquisite backhand drop shots and, having consolidated her advantage, she quickly forged further ahead, her willingness to chase every lost cause driving the American world No 3 to distraction.

Siniakova was aided and abetted by an erratic display from Gauff in her first match since losing to Aryna Sabalenka in the semi-finals of last month’s Australian Open. The 19-year-old made 45 unforced errors in total, 30 of which came off the forehand, and her woes were compounded by a poor performance on serve, where she won a meagre 30% of the points behind her second delivery. 

As one might expect from a collision of two of the world’s finest doubles players, there were some delightful touches at the net, not least in the sixth game, where Gauff raced on to a Siniakova drop shot to win a rat-a-tat exchange with a thumping overhead. That paved the way for a love break, but it was a rare early success for the American. Siniakova immediately restored her two-break cushion with a lovely piece of touch play and a rifled backhand winner, before serving out the set to love.

Gauff began the second set in a more aggressive key, finding her range off the ground as she moved inside the baseline and began ripping the ball with greater venom and conviction. As the American opened up a 4-0 lead, Siniakova won just five points, her mistakes mounting under the pressure exerted by her younger rival. But the Czech rallied brilliantly down the stretch, holding her nerve, scrambling for every shot, and forever making one more ball as Gauff was drawn into more unsightly errors. 

Sinakova will face the American qualifier Danielle Collins, a 6-4, 7-5 winner over Marie Bouzkova, for a place in the quarter-finals.

 “She’s a really aggressive player, she is going for the points, and I think it’s going to be kind of the same,” said Siniakova, a seven-time grand slam doubles champion. “I need to try to be more aggressive than her and maybe let her play as much as I can. I will try to focus on my game and fight for every point.”

On a day of shocks in Doha, Ons Jabeur and Maria Sakkari, respectively seeded fourth and seventh, also exited the tournament. 

Still suffering from “small problems” in the right knee on which she underwent minor surgery this time last year, Jabeur fell to a third defeat in four matches this season, losing 6-3, 6-2 against Lesia Tsurenko. It was the 37th-ranked Ukrainian’s first top-10 win for five years. 

Sakkari, meanwhile, came out on the wrong side of a tight three-setter against Linda Noskova, the Czech teenager who defeated Iga Swiatek en route to the quarter-finals of last month’s Australian Open. The Greek held a match point against Noskova’s serve at 5-3 in the second set only to fall to a 3-6, 7-6 (7-2), 7-5 defeat.

Naomi Osaka followed up her opening-round win over Caroline Garcia with a 6-3, 7-6 (11-9) victory against Croatia’s Petra Martic. It is the first time the former world No 1 has put together back-to-back victories since her return from maternity leave last month in Brisbane.

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Danger lurked at every turn and yet, after winning a tough opener against Sofia Kenin, the 2020 champion, and then recovering from the brink of defeat against Danielle Collins, her semi-final conqueror two years ago, a route through the top half appeared to be clearing for the Polish world No 1. That impression deepened when Elena Rybakina, last year’s finalist and a potential semi-final opponent, subsequently suffered a shock early exit.

Instead, however, Swiatek became the biggest casualty of the tournament so far, a contest initially in her grasp slipping through her fingers in the face of a tenacious and powerful performance from Linda Noskova, a 19-year-old Czech making her main draw debut at Melbourne Park.

While Noskova’s 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 victory earned her a place in the second week of a major for the first time, for Swiatek it concluded an 18-match winning streak dating back to late September. It was the Pole’s earliest grand slam loss since Alizé Cornet ended her 37-match unbeaten streak two summers ago at Wimbledon, also in the third round. 

“I felt like I had everything under control,” said Swiatek, who was a set up and comfortable on serve until Noskova drilled a pair of forehand winners to claim a love break in the eighth game of the second set. 

“I think she just went all in without any pressure. She probably knew that she has nothing to lose, you know? Maybe I should have done that when I had break points in previous games, but I wanted to be the solid version of myself.

“I had a couple of chances to break her in second set and I didn’t use them. So that’s a shame. But when she broke me, she was kind of proactive. I wanted to do that as well later, in the next games. Sometimes I was rushing it. I just wasn’t playing kind of with my intuition and naturally.”

Those difficulties owed much to Noskova’s weight of shot, which kept Swiatek off balance and denied her time to set up, particularly on the forehand, and especially when the Czech began taking her backhand up the line more frequently. Twenty of Swiatek’s 33 unforced errors came off the forehand, with almost half those mistakes occurring in the final set.

Even so, it would be doing both players a disservice to suggest that this was simply another example of Swiatek’s oft-cited vulnerability to power players. Noskova hits a big ball, but she also has a knack for hitting the right ball. When Swiatek lost to Jelena Ostapenko at last year’s US Open, the Pole was on the receiving end of a relentless onslaught of hell-for-leather ball-striking to which she was rendered more susceptible by poor shot selection. Noskova’s approach was more varied: rather than relying simply on brute force, the teenager deployed sudden changes of pace and direction to keep Swiatek guessing and prevent her from establishing her usual commanding rhythm from the baseline. 

Nor was it simply a case of the world No 50 gleefully taking advantage of a free hit against a woman ranked 49 places above her. There was genuine conviction in Noskova’s play; her attitude was that of a player with everything to win, rather than nothing to lose. 

“Playing on such a court for a first time, playing with Iga for a second time, I really wanted to win this,” said Noskova, who won just five games in her only previous meeting with Swiatek. “I know my game. I know that I have improved a lot in the last year and a half, year. I just believed [in] my game tonight. 

“I really wanted this win because I didn’t really come to that court with the thought of, like, I have nothing to lose. I took it very seriously. It was like a match as any other. 

“When I’m going to be aggressive, I can play with anyone. Obviously there will be matches when I will not play my best. But tonight, especially when I warmed up, I was feeling pretty good. Physically I was just fine.

“I was coming there on court [not only] to have a great match, but to win it.”

That she did that will feel all the sweeter after the events of last year, when Noskova reached her first WTA 500 final in Adelaide, rising from 102 to 56 in the rankings as result, but too late to claim a place in the main draw at Melbourne Park. Overlooked for a wild card, the Czech went on to lose to Katherine Sebov of Canada in the first round of qualifying. One year on, she will face Elina Svitolina, a 6-2, 6-3 winner over Switzerland’s Viktorija Golubic, for a place in the quarter-finals. 

Swiatek, meanwhile, who has added new dimensions to her game in the three and a half months since she was last beaten, promised to “get back to work”.

“I lost, but I’m going to have more tournaments,” said the four-time grand slam champion. “I remember last year, just getting back to work. I could reset and just focus on the next tournaments. So I’m going to do the same this year.”

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With his 6-7 (8-10), 7-6 (7-3), 6-4 victory, Djokovic earned the 92nd title of his career, drawing him level with Rafael Nadal at fourth on the all-time men’s winners’ list. Only Jimmy Connors, Roger Federer and Ivan Lendl – with 109, 103 and 94 titles respectively – have won more. Djokovic will now head to Melbourne Park, where he has lifted the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup a record nine times, hopeful that he can equal another Nadal landmark by claiming a 22nd grand slam title. 

It is all a far cry from this time last year, when the unvaccinated Serb fell foul of the country’s strict Covid regulations and was sent home. Having arrived in Australia uncertain about what kind of welcome he would receive, Djokovic has been feted in Adelaide. In return, he has embraced both the locals and the locale, insisting that he bears no ill-will over the events of last January.  

It has not all been plain sailing – a bothersome hamstring briefly threatened to overshadow a superb semi-final performance against Daniil Medvedev, while he testily ordered his brother Marko and agent Edoardo Artaldi to leave his box after dropping a tight opening set against Korda – but Djokovic looks to be in fine fettle heading into the first major of the season.

“Five great matches,” said Djokovic, reflecting on his week’s work following his 34th straight win on Australian soil, a run that dates back to early 2019. 

“Tough two tiebreakers against [Quentin] Halys, who is playing very well. Then I had [Denis] Shapovalov, Medvedev and Korda, who is on fire, playing some high-level tennis, striking the ball amazingly. I couldn’t ask for a better preparation and lead-up to the Australian Open.  

“Of course, the Australian Open is the biggest reason I’m here in Australia, but at the same time I want to win every tournament I play, regardless of the level of the tournament. I love playing in Australia. My results are a testament to that. I wouldn’t be able to play so well in a place where I don’t feel well.”

Djokovic did not look in particularly robust health when he took a medical timeout to have treatment on a hamstring injury late in the opening set of his semi-final win over Medvedev. But treatment that went “deep into the night” before the final had the desired effect, with the 35-year-old largely untroubled physically against Korda.

“It was all right,” said Djokovic. “A few times in the match I felt the muscle was tightening up, but nothing that would worry me for my performance.

“I look forward to Melbourne. Rod Laver [Arena] is my most successful court in my career. I love playing there. I look forward to it. I have a week off for recovery now and working on specific things in terms of my game, my body, getting my mind in the right state for the best-of-five and two long weeks hopefully.”

However strongly Djokovic may have pulled up physically, such serenity looked a long way off when Korda, son of former world No 2 and Australian Open champion Petr Korda, converted his seventh set point to take early command of the contest. Bold and imaginative from the baseline, willing and incisive at the net, the 22-year-old American matched Djokovic step for step from the outset and, at 6-5 in the second set, held a match point on the top seed’s serve.

Djokovic confronted the danger head on, working his way to the net behind a backhand approach to draw a lunging defensive lob from Korda. There are worse positions in which to put the Serb on a key point. His overhead is probably the least reliable weapon in his arsenal – although, given that he is one of the most technically rounded players in the sport’s history, that is not saying a great deal – but the Serb backpedalled brilliantly to slot away the opportunity and, having held, he dominated the ensuing tiebreak.

It remained a nip-and-tuck affair down the stretch until, ironically, Korda missed a far simpler overhead to gift Djokovic a match point of his own. As the American glanced skyward in dismay, he must have known what was coming. Sure enough, Djokovic converted at the first time of asking Yet he can only be encouraged by a week that brought wins over Andy Murray, Roberto Bautista Agut and Jannik Sinner before Yoshihito Nishioka retired after falling a set down in the semi-finals. 

“I think it shows me that I definitely have the game to disrupt whoever’s on the other side of the net,” said Korda, who will be assured of a seeding at the Australian Open after rising two places to 31 in the rankings. 

“I take a lot of pride in that. I think going forward, it’s just only going to help me to get these kind of experiences under my belt, even though it hurts.”

In the women’s final, Aryna Sabalenka won her first title since the 2021 Madrid Open, prevailing 6-3, 7-6 (7-4) against the rising Czech star Linda Noskova. Sabalenka, who did not drop a set all week, was forced to draw deeply on her experience and fighting spirit. 

“This young lady is going to play a lot of finals and she’s going to be a top player,” said the Belarusian world No 5. “I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a lot more finals for her, and hopefully for us [both].  She’s playing really great tennis.”  

Novoska, 18, advanced to the final after twice saving match points, first in qualifying and then against Victoria Azarenka, the former world No 1, in the quarter-finals. Over the course of an outstanding week, she also defeated Daria Kasatkina and Ons Jabeur, the top seed, to rise from 102 to 56 in the rankings.

“I think that when I trust myself and my game especially, I can just freely go for it, I can definitely play and actually beat some of the best players in the world right now,” said Novoska. 

“That’s a really great feeling. But I’m obviously going to have to develop my game. There are a lot of blind spots. There’s always things to work on.”

Novoska could do worse than follow the example of fellow 18-year-old Coco Gauff, who stormed to the third title of her career at the ASB Classic in Auckland with a 6-1, 6-1 win over Spanish qualifier Rebeka Masarova. Gauff, whose steady improvement propelled her to the French Open final and a career-high ranking of fourth last year, dropped just 22 games over the course of a dominant week in New Zealand.

“Couldn’t ask for a better start to my season,” said the American. “First title on hard since I was 15. I’m happy to be successful on a surface that I love.”

Djokovic will know how she feels.

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