Defeat Jabeur 3 times in a year
Before the competition with Jabeur, Vondrousova was not appreciated as the 6th seed. The reason was because Jabeur had excellently eliminated a series of strong candidates for the championship to have the 2nd year in a row to come to the same place. Wimbledon final.
Confronting Vondrousova, Jabeur seemed to have an easy match when she won the first 2 games and then led the opponent 4-2. However, when pushed into a difficult position, Vondrousova rose violently.
She won the remaining 4 games to close the first set with a score of 6-4. Continuing the excitement after an impressive comeback in the first set, Vondrousova won the first game in the second set. However, Jabeur also showed bravery when not only quickly equalized but also led Vondrousova 3-1.
Unfortunately, despite the superior number of winners (25 vs. 10), in the end Jabeur still lost the second set with a score of 4-6, thereby having to give up the championship to his opponent. This is the result of Jabeur making too many bad self-polishing errors (31), and Vondrousova not (just 13).
Speaking after the match, Jabeur said she tried to do everything well but was too stressed in decisive situations. As a result, Jabeur lost his third Grand Slam final in over a year.
For her part, Vondrousova revealed the reason she overcame the challenge named Jabeur as follows: “The coach Jan Mertl himself must admit that he does not understand why I can be so calm. I think this is the key to winning Wimbledon this year. In my opinion, to achieve success, you need to believe in your abilities and not panic under any circumstances.”
Overcoming Jabeur, Vondrousova has won all 3 times the two players have met this year. Notably, she was once inferior to the 28-year-old Tunisian player leading 3-0 in the head-to-head ratio.
Now the score has been equalized 3-3. Before the last match, Jabeur had consecutively lost to Vondrousova at the Australian Open and Indian Wells 2023.
Conquer memorable milestones
To see more clearly the value of Vondrousova’s feat, we should know that the 24-year-old comes to Vondrousova as an unseeded player. The details above make what she did at the Grand Slam on grass in England deserve to be considered a miracle story.
With her victory over Jabeur, Vondrousova went down in history as the first non-seeded Wimbledon champion in the Open era. In the journey to the throne, she eliminated 5 opponents as seeds. This is something no one has done since Kvitova’s case more than a decade ago (2011).
Along with Kvitova, Vondrousova is among the rare Czech players honored to touch the Venus Rosewater disc for the Wimbledon champion. Besides Kvitova and Vondrousova, the only compatriot of the aforementioned couple to do this is Jana Novotna.
It should also be added that Vondrousova is the first player to reach two Grand Slam finals without being seeded. In 2019, she reached the final match at Roland Garros, the tournament that Ashleigh Barty won.
Before this year’s Wimbledon, Vondrousova had never even made it past the second round at this playground. Her record is extremely modest when she only won one match after four times participating in the tournament.
With only 42nd in the world, Vondrousova has set the record as the lowest ranked player to conquer the Wimbledon championship. After the 3rd consecutive victory against Jabeur, her ranking will definitely improve significantly.
According to calculations, Vondrousova will squeeze into the top 10 when WTA conducts adding and subtracting points and updating the rankings next week. This is an honor that Vondrousova has never experienced before (the highest rank she achieved was 14th in the world on July 1, 2019).
