Markéta Vondroušová Flips the Script at Wimbledon

Markéta Vondroušová came into the Wimbledon women’s final as the forty-second-ranked tennis player in the world and the seventh-ranked player in the Czech Republic. She was not even the top-ranked Czech left-hander—that was Petra Kvitová, a two-time Wimbledon champion who had been easily defeated in the round of sixteen by Ons Jabeur, Vondroušová’s opponent in Saturday’s final. No unseeded player had ever made the Wimbledon final in the Open Era. No unseeded woman had ever won it. Vondroušová was not an obvious candidate to break the streak. She had made the final of the French Open in 2019, and won the silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics, but she had never broken into the game’s Top Ten. Coming into the tournament, her record on grass was 4–11. She spent last year’s tournament exploring London as a tourist, her wrist in a cast. She had not expected much of herself this time around. Until the final, her husband had stayed home in Prague, caring for their cat.

The player Vondroušová faced on Saturday, Jabeur, had cast herself as a figure of destiny—and had the charisma, the backstory, and the game to make it seem so. She had embraced her role as a trailblazer and inspirational figure—the first African or Arab woman with a chance to win a Grand Slam. She carried herself with a kind of uplifting confidence, an ebullience that earned her the nickname of Tunisia’s Minister of Happiness. She had appeared in the final at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open last year, and had expected herself to win them. But it was at this year’s championship that she seemed to come into her own, to exploit the fullness of her gifts on grass: her creativity, her scything slices, her ability to experiment with speed and spin, and her firm footing on a surface that leaves most players unsure of how to step. She beat four former Grand Slam champions on the way to this year’s final, and referred, winningly, to her desire for “revenge.”

There is a great tension in sport between surprise and narrative, between the beauty of uncertainty and the hunger for fulfillment. Jabeur had the stronger record, the harder path, the greater experience, the love of the crowd—the weight of a grand narrative was on her side. There was a kind of anonymity to Vondroušová, a disregard for dreams. (Not even she had hoped for this title.) Before the match, commentators scrambled to color her story: her many tattoos, her wrist injuries, her cat.

At the start of the match, the story seemed to play out as most had thought it would: Jabeur was the aggressor, able to hit for power or finesse on both sides of the ball. She was the aggressor early, breaking Vondroušová in the Czech’s first service game to go up 2–0. But Vondroušová’s consistency—she made only six unforced errors in the first set—started to wear Jabeur down. Vondroušová has looping, wristy forehands and a blistering backhand, a fantastic skidding slice, and good movement—given her ability to block a ball with deft touch, it is hard to hit a shot past her. The tension in Jabeur became more and more evident, and her errors began to mount. She struggled to defend her serve in particular, as Vondroušová—with her good hands, she is one of the game’s better returners—started to pounce on Jabeur’s vulnerable second serve, which in turn put even more pressure on her first. In the end, Jabeur won less than half of the points not only on her second serve but also on her first. She hit more winners than Vondroušová—twenty-five to ten—but also made far more unforced errors, thirty-one compared with Vondroušová’s thirteen.

There was a brief moment early in the second set when Jabeur, who has repeatedly shown an ability to come back from behind, seemed to find her most heroic tennis. But it vanished, and with it, it was obvious, her resolve. She started to miss by feet, not inches. Her face became dejected, her control wild. After Vondroušová won the match, falling to the grass in disbelief, Jabeur pulled off her headband. Her sadness was overwhelming, and her tears began to fall.

Vondroušová stayed steady, as she had during the semifinal, when she had taken down Elina Svitolina. Svitolina, after giving birth and embracing her role as an inspirational figure for the Ukrainian people, had the total adoration of the crowd. But it was never Vondroušová’s job to be a footnote in someone else’s storybook ending. Stories, after all, don’t write themselves. ♦