Marketa Vondrousova wins Wimbledon and her first Grand Slam singles title

Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic, one of the most unlikely Wimbledon champions, is no more unlikely.

On Saturday, Vondrousova defeated Ons Jabeur, a trailblazing Tunisian and heavy favourite, in straight sets, 6-4, 6-4, stunning herself, her family and friends, and the tennis world.

Vondrousova, 24, became the first unseeded player to win Wimbledon and the latest in a long line of Czech-born women to lift the most important trophy in the sport, dating back to Martina Navratilova’s dominance at Wimbledon in the 1980s, after Navratilova defected to the United States.

Like Navratilova, who watched the game from a penalty area, Vondrousova is a left-handed player with a nasty serve that she used throughout the afternoon in the most tense moments when Jabeur tried to take control of the game or make another comeback.

The similarities with Navratilova, an aggressive serve-and-volleyer who plunged into the sport as a teenager, mostly end there.

Vondrousova, who won a foul-filled match that made up for the lack of quality with surprise, is now the ultimate under-the-radar player after going three-for-three in crushing tennis fairytales. She defeated Naomi Osaka at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics just days after Osaka lit the Olympic flame as favorite to win a gold medal on home soil.

On Thursday, Vondrousova defeated Elina Svitolina, a new mom from Ukraine who made a spirited run to the semifinals that inspired the people of her country as they defended against the Russian invasion.

On Saturday afternoon, it was Jabeur’s turn to have her dream crushed by Vondrousova’s tricky and unorthodox play in a tournament that Vondrousova said was impossible to win, given her limited history of success on grass.

“When we came, I was like, ‘Try to win a few games,'” Vondrousova said. “Now that this has happened, it’s crazy,” Vondrousova said.

She had plenty of company asking the same, considering she had a cast on her wrist during surgery at Wimbledon last year. This time, Vondrousova’s husband chose not to come and see her until Saturday, instead staying home and caring for their hairless Sphynx cat.

However, after Vondrousova defeated Svitolina in the semifinals, Stepan Simek rushed to a cat sitter and took a flight to watch his wife play in the Wimbledon final. They would celebrate their first birthday on Sunday.

“One day we will have grandchildren and I look forward to the day when I can tell the story of their grandmother winning Wimbledon,” said Simek.

Vondrousova’s best friend and doubles partner, Miriam Kolodziejova, said she did not believe Vondrousova could win the singles title.

“It’s like a dream for us,” she said.

For Jabeur, losing in a second Wimbledon final in a row to an opponent who had performed far less than other women she defeated on her way to the abyss of tennis history was nothing short of heartbreaking. Jabeur has now lost three of the last five Grand Slam finals, just short of becoming the first woman of Arab descent and from Africa to win major championships in tennis.

Like most tennis players, she has long dreamed of winning Wimbledon and last year she used a picture of the women’s trophy as the lock screen on her phone.

Jabeur started quickly and repeatedly broke the serve of a nervous Vondrousova in the first set. She played tight from the start, but had a 4-2 lead in the first set as she began to unravel, sending forehands into the net and backhands soaring past the baseline.

Before she knew it, Jabeur was down a set and had lost her serve to start the second. For her part, Vondrousova did everything she had to do, keeping the ball in play, hitting her curling, spinning shots that were so unlike the power Jabeur had faced in her recent matches.

Jabeur managed to stabilize herself and even shot to a new lead in the second set 3-1, but again lost her ability to recover, struggled to find the field and sent too many balls to the center of the net. She has lost five of the last six games.

Vondrousova finally ended Jabeurs’ nightmarish afternoon with a running backhand volley on the open court, and another woman from the Czech Republic was the Wimbledon champion, stunning anyone who imagined that scenario, but just not starring Vondrousova.

“My coach told me after the final that he said, ‘I couldn’t believe how calm you are,'” Vondrousova said. “That was the main key to this title.”

As the ball bounced twice well out of her reach, Jabeur, known as the “Minister of Happiness” for her almost always cheerful demeanor, pulled her bandana off her head and began her slow, sad and increasingly familiar trudge towards the net.

Vondrousova was a little late getting there. She had collapsed on the grass at the end of the last run. She got up to hug Jabeur and soon she was back in the center of the court, kneeling and trying to figure out how she could have pulled off this unlikely run. Jabeur sat in her chair and wiped away the tears.

There were more at the awards ceremony, as Jabeur held the runner-up in one hand and covered her eyes and nose with the other.

“This is the most painful loss of my career,” she said, before trying to channel all the positivity she could muster.

“I’m not going to give up, and I’m coming back stronger,” she told a crowd that was finally able to cheer her on as it had wanted all afternoon.

For Vondrousova and Czech tennis, the festivities had only just begun. The Czech Republic, with a population of about 10.5 million people, has become a women’s tennis factory unlike anything that exists in the sport. There are eight Czech women in the top 50, most of them, like Vondrousova, are in their mid-twenties and under.

When the tournament started, Petra Kvitova, ranked 10th in the world, seemed the most likely Czech finalist. Kvitova, a two-time Wimbledon champion in 2011 and 2014, had won a grass tournament in Berlin a few weeks earlier.

Vondrousova had won only two grass court matches and was two years away from competing at Wimbledon. A month ago, however, Vondrousova had watched Karolina Muchova, another talented, low-profile Czech woman with a game that defies this era of power tennis, narrowly miss winning the French Open. She and Muchova are members of the same tennis club at home, Vondrousova said. And she cried when Muchova lost to world No. 1 Iga Swiatek in three sets.

Watching Muchova had inspired Vondrousova, who had made it to the 2019 French Open final when she was just 19 years old. Muchova’s career had also been sidelined by injuries, but there she played on one of the sport’s biggest stages.

Like Muchova, Vondrousova was initially unsure if doctors would be able to fix her wrist problem. The injury sidelined her for a long time, and Simek said it made her appreciate tennis more.

“You just can’t play, tennis as work, you have to enjoy it, you have to love it,” said Simek. “She really enjoys it and she loves the game. She even enjoys watching the game and I don’t think many players enjoy it that much.”

At Wimbledon, Muchova lost in the first round, but Vondrousova began a steady march through seven opponents, including five seeded players and several, including Jabeur, who were known for their prowess on grass. In the quarterfinals, with the third set tied at 4-1, Jessica Pegula had a game point to advance, 5-1, but Vondrousova caught fire and won the last five games to take the set, 6-4.

Then came her last two matches against opponents playing for targets much bigger than herself, a weight that can both energize and strengthen a player, as well as weaken and strain.

Against Vondrousova, both Svitolina and Jabeur arrived tight and flat on Center Court, shadows of the players who had thrilled the crowd and held the promise of a comeback that would be talked about for years, if not decades. On the other side of the net was Vondrousova, a player best known for the body art on her arms, who had made a bet with her coach, Jan Mertl, a former Czech player, that if she won a Grand Slam, he would get a tattoo to commemorate the triumph.

Vondrousova held her winners sign and said they would go to the tattoo parlor on Sunday.

David Walstein reporting contributed.