Marketa Vondrousova: Unseeded. Unsponsored. Undefeated. Dropped at the end of her Nike contract last year, she'd won one match at Wimbledon before this tournament. The 24-year-old Czech thought this title was 'impossible'. She was wrong.
Marketa Vondrousova is the women’s champion of Wimbledon and her life is about to change.
She doesn’t have a kit sponsor after being dropped at the end of her four-year contract with Nike last year, and she is the first unseeded woman to win this title. The last woman to reach a Wimbledon final unseeded was Billie Jean King, who was still in college when she lost to Margaret Court in 1963.
She missed six months of 2022, including Wimbledon, after having wrist surgery. She still came to London last July, supporting her doubles partner Miriam Kolodziejova in qualifying and then enjoying the city. But her main aim at that point was to be out of the cast on her arm before marrying her partner Stepan Simek on July 16. That should be quite the first wedding anniversary tomorrow.
Having spent most of the fortnight looking after their cat Frankie back in Prague, Stepan flew over to be on Centre Court for the final after they found a cat-sitter. Vondrousova told us she plans to spend some of her £2.35million prize money on some fish for Frankie. Before this match, Jabeur’s serve had been nigh on impenetrable. She had won 90 per cent of her service games in her run to the final but Vondrousova succeeded where pretty much all her previous opponents had failed, breaking Jabeur again and again. The Tunisian won 40 per cent of her service games today. Vondrousova’s returning was just too good.
At 1-0 down in the second, Jabeur did brilliantly to rally from 40-0 down to break straight back. Then she held her serve for the first time in nearly half an hour to go 2-1 up. Again she broke Vondrousova. Was this the moment that everything changed? The crowd were on her side and it felt like the momentum was shifting.
“I think this is the most painful loss of my career,” she said on court when the match was over. “It’s going to be a tough day for me today, but I’m not going to give up. I’m going to come back stronger and win this tournament.” Jabeur had got used to the big hitting of Petra Kvitova, Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka in the previous three rounds, and Vondrousova’s slower forehand really caught the No 6 seed out.
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