One of the big storylines in 2023 women’s tennis has been the ability of three players to lift themselves and their standard of play above everyone else on the WTA Tour. Aryna Sabalenka is having the best season of anyone in the women’s game. Iga Swiatek is right behind her, and Elena Rybakina has been very strong, though a clear third. We have seen in 2023 what we hadn’t seen a lot of in previous years: Elite WTA players returning to the latter rounds of big tournaments and meeting each other on a recurring basis.
At the Australian Open, we saw Rybakina play both Swiatek and Sabalenka. At Indian Wells, Rybakina and Sabalenka met in the final. Swiatek and Sabalenka met multiple times during the clay season. We all wondered if we would get a reunion between two of these three players at Wimbledon.
Sabalenka made her way to the semifinals. Rybakina was one set away from joining her after breaking serve at 5-6 and then winning a first-set tiebreak in her quarterfinal. The storyline knitting together the top three players in women’s tennis was close to gaining another significant and weighty chapter in 2023.
Ons Jabeur dramatically changed the conversation.
She didn’t dominate Rybakina in the second set, but she was the better player, committing only three unforced errors in a set which was 4-4. Rybakina is a top-notch closer, and she was just two games away from a Sabalenka showdown, but Jabeur flatly took this match away from her by raising her game to a higher level. Jabeur’s more well-rounded game exploited Rybakina’s deficient return and inconsistent ground attack. When Rybakina pushed back midway through the third set in a last-ditch attempt at a comeback, Jabeur painted the chalk on Centre Court and took the air out of the defending champion’s balloon.
We are left with the reality that when Ons Jabeur is healthy — she wasn’t for a good portion of this season, preventing her from establishing much of any momentum while her three esteemed peers loaded up on big results — she is excellent. She is excellent enough to deserve standing in the same conversation with the three women ahead of her in the WTA rankings.
She doesn’t have the major championship trophy Sabalenka, Swiatek, and Rybakina all have, but Jabeur has made multiple major finals, whereas Sabalenka — whom Ons will face in the Wimbledon semifinals — has made only one. Jabeur, with two straight semifinal runs at Wimbledon and her romp to the final of the 2022 U.S. Open, has a strong major-tournament resume over the past five events. The crucial point to make is that Jabeur, like Swiatek, Sabalenka, and Rybakina, is getting back to the latter stages of the most important tournaments. What the top three are doing, she is doing as well. This win over Rybakina in the Wimbledon quarterfinals significantly elevates Jabeur in the larger story of women’s tennis.
She will not be favored against Sabalenka in Thursday’s semifinal. She has a very reasonable chance of winning, but beating Rybakina and Sabalenka in consecutive days will be a very big ask. (This is where we are reminded that the women deserve a day off between quarters and semis, something Wimbledon used to have under the old “Manic Monday” format.) However, even if she does lose to Sabalenka, Jabeur has made a notable jump at this Wimbledon. She will walk away from SW19 with a very big prize.
Now we get to see if she can walk away with the biggest one: the Venus Rosewater Dish.
Tennis with an Accent 