If she wins Wimbledon on Saturday, Ons Jabeur will achieve a lot of firsts in women’s tennis history, but she has to get through Marketa Vondrousova first. We can worry about those firsts when the time comes for the ladies’ singles final.
For now, we can still note that Ons Jabeur has done something unprecedented in women’s tennis at Wimbledon.
It’s not that she has made the Wimbledon final, because she did so last year.
It’s not that she has made consecutive Wimbledon finals — plenty of people have done that, too.
Beat the No. 3 and No. 2 seeds in consecutive matches at Wimbledon? That happened in 1987, when Martina Navratilova beat third-seeded Chris Evert and second-seeded Steffi Graf to win the Wimbledon title.
So, what is the answer?
Ons Jabeur not only beat the No. 3 and 2 seeds in consecutive matches; she not only did so after losing the first-set tiebreak 7-5 in each match; she not only beat opponents who had won major championships; she did something else: She won these matches on consecutive days.
Remember: Wimbledon’s longtime refusal to play on Middle Sunday meant that the tournament structure put one day between the women’s quarterfinals and semifinals on a regular basis. In years when rain affected the schedule, we might have seen a player win a quarterfinal and semifinal on consecutive days, but that’s a weather-adjusted, in-the-moment reality.
We have not seen a player beat third and second seeds on consecutive days in the quarters and semis in a tournament with Middle Sunday play at Wimbledon. Jabeur knew, entering this tournament, that if she was going to return to the Wimbledon final, she would have to win a quarterfinal and semifinal on consecutive days. She knew that she might have to beat both Rybakina and Sabalenka, two superb players enjoying fabulous 2023 seasons, to get where she wanted to go.
(We reiterate the point that players SHOULD have a day off between the quarters and semis, but Wimbledon did not make this adjustment, sadly. None of the four majors have this now that Wimbledon abandoned its second-week schedule last year. It’s an unfortunate development in the sport. All of this does, however, magnify the amount of heavy lifting Jabeur did to pull this off.)
We have not seen a player know before Wimbledon started that she would have to beat such credentialed opponents on consecutive days in the ladies’ quarters and semis … and then do it … and do so after losing first sets in each contentious 3-set battle.
That’s a first, and we didn’t have to wait until Saturday for it to happen.
Jabeur, of course, hopes that this is not the last of the firsts she achieves at Wimbledon in 2023. Saturday is next.
Tennis with an Accent 