Marketa Vondrousova became the first unseeded woman to win Wimbledon on Saturday, defeating Ons Jabeur 6-4 6-4 to win her first slam title. She joins a small list of players to have won a slam while unseeded including Serena Williams, Kim Clijsters, Emma Raducanu and Sloane Stephens. She will also find herself in the Top 10 for the first time in her career, surpassing the No. 14 rank she achieved back in 2019.
Vondrousova had shown promise on other surfaces before, making the final of the French Open and winning the silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics. However, there was no indication that she would be ready to make a challenge at Wimbledon especially with just four career wins on grass heading into the tournament. Her lefty serve and great touch had worked perfectly this fortnight though, with some impressive wins on her way to the final.
She was the one that looked nervy early on though, falling 2-4 down and looking uncharacteristically shaky on serve. It was from that point on though that Jabeur begin to falter, throwing in a whole host of errors on her way to losing five straight games. The Tunisian rallied to go a break up again in the second set but it was more of the same from that point onwards with last year’s finalist once again unable to deal with the stellar defence of her opponent.
She threw in a few more errors to gift Vondrousova the decisive break in game nine, allowing the Czech to serve for the match. She did so with ease, completing her fairytale run in style. It was a fairly tidy performance from her in general but a lot has to be said about Jabeur’s uncharacteristically error-strewn performance with the Tunisian hitting 31 unforced errors in total.
Jabeur will be hoping that she can follow in the footsteps of Kim Clijsters, Simona Halep, Chris Evert and Andy Murray. Each of these lost their first three slam finals before finally going on to win the big one. It was Clijsters that consoled the Tunisian after the final as she revealed. “I love Kim so much. She’s a great inspiration for me. I grew up watching her a bit. The fact that she takes the time to give me advice and to really hug me, always be there for me, I think it’s priceless. She was telling me all the time she lost four. That’s why I know the information, otherwise would have been tough.” she said. “But, yeah, that’s the positive out of it. You cannot force things. It wasn’t meant to be. It wasn’t meant to be.”
Vondrousova’s career to date has seen her struggle with injury but she has shown she certainly has the game to stick around the top 10 if her body holds up. There will be a lot of sports equipment companies ruing their opportunities not to sponsor the Czech but that is not going to be an issue for her in the future. Still only 24, there could be a lot more to come from her.
