Ons Jabeur is in her Avenger era, and it seems she won’t be stopping anytime soon with her next target in sight – Marketa Vondrousova. Both players are set to fight it out for their maiden Grand Slam title in the Wimbledon final at the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club on Saturday.
Sixth-seeded Jabeur has done extremely well to make it to her second consecutive Wimbledon final, becoming the first woman since Serena Williams in 2012 to beat three Top-10 players – Aryna Sabalenka, Elena Rybakina, and Petra Kvitova – in the same edition of The Championships.
Revenge on her mind
For Jabeur, the 28-year-old Tunisian, it was not only about beating these three players and reaching the finals but also about “revenge,” as she said on multiple occasions during the tournament.
“I’m going to prepare and take my revenge from two years ago,” Jabeur had said ahead of the semifinal clash against Sabalenka, to whom she lost in the 2021 Wimbledon quarterfinal.
During the match against Rybakina, – who beat her in last year’s summit clash – Jabeur said “I made sure, I changed seats this time. I went for the other seat that she won last year.”
And a similar warning has been issued for her final opponent this year. “I’m going for my revenge,” she said on her clash against Vondrousova, who has beaten her twice this year including the round of 16 clash at the Australian Open.
A different player
In the semifinal, Jabeur lost the first set after leading 4-2 in the tiebreaker. She trailed in the second set too - down 2-4 - and looked dejected for a brief period before forcing a comeback to win the set 6-4. After the match, she said: “Maybe the old me would have lost the match today.”
The “nothing to lose” attitude which she says she has developed in the last year along with having a lot more patience and making sure to stick to the game plan is what makes Jabeur a different player from the last time she was here.
Despite Sabalenka’s fiery serving, Jabeur just wanted to return and never go into the defensive mode. “I was like, honestly, I’m not going to give a s***, I’m just going to go in and hit my return. I was returning much better,” she said after the match.
A dream run
For Vondrousova, “It’s crazy that this is happening.” It does not happen very often that an unseeded player goes into the Wimbledon final and wins it – if she does it, she will be the first in women’s singles to do so.
The possibility of her reaching a Grand Slam final looked slim considering the fact that the 24-year-old Czech was out due to a wrist injury for six months and returned to Tour-Level tennis only in Adelaide this year.
The 2019 French Open finalist defeated Ukrainian wildcard Elina Svitolina in the semifinal rather comfortably in straight sets 6-3, 6-3 but as she says, “anything can happen in tennis.”
Lefty vs Righty battle
While Jabeur isn’t an out-and-out hitter and tries to mix things up with drop shots and slices, Vondrousova relies on hitting more winners than her opponent and brings the net into play.
But here’s the catch - the Czech is a left-hander playing against Jabeur who uses slice as a key weapon. The Tunisian has won 55 per cent of her matches playing against lefties in comparison to the marginally higher 62 per cent wins against righties. Jabeur hasn’t been able to go past Vondrousova twice this year.
“I mean, for me, it’s easier to play right-handed players than left,” Vondrousova said.
Will Vondrousova again keep Jabeur at bay or will last year’s runner-up find a way to go one step further and clinch the Venus Rosewater Dish? Whoever wins, Wimbledon will see history being created on a Saturday night in the middle of July.
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