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The unseeded, unsponsored, undefeated new champion of Wimbledon: How Marketa Vondrousova did the “impossible.” |
The Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova: Unseeded. Unsponsored. Undefeated.
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Unseeded. Unsponsored. Undefeated.
Marketa Vondrousova is the women’s champion of Wimbledon and her life is about to change.
The 24-year-old’s talent has never been in question, but not in her wildest dreams could she have imagined ending her 2023 challenge like this, with a 6-4, 6-4 win over one of the pre-tournament favourites, Ons Jabeur.
She was — in her words — “crushed” by Ashleigh Barty in the 2019 French Open final as a teenager, and was the silver medallist to Belinda Bencic at the Tokyo Olympics two years ago. So she has been in big finals before.
But on grass? Across her four previous visits to Wimbledon, she had won one match. Her career record on the surface, even with these seven wins in the past two weeks is: played 22, won 11, lost 11.
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 (and still known as Billie Jean Moffitt) when she lost to Margaret Court in 1963. When she and Vondrousova crossed paths after the final on Saturday, the American legend said: “You’re the first unseeded winner ever. I love it!”
Nobody expected this, least of all Vondrousova and her coach Jan Hernych, and they will be getting tattoos together in the near future having made a bet before Wimbledon.
“I think I’ll choose for him,” she said. “Maybe we’ll get the same one. We talked before the tournament, and he said, ‘Yeah, so maybe if you win a grand slam, then I’ll do it’. Then this is happening…”
Vondrousova’s story is one of patience and perseverance. She has lost count of the number of tattoos already on her body but there is one in particular on her arm that reads, “No rain, no flowers”. It sums her up rather perfectly. She’s been through a lot to get here.
She won her first main-tour event at the age of 17, in only her second tournament, and it’s been a seven-year wait for the next title.
During that time, as well as those highs at Roland Garros and in Japan, she has suffered three big injuries — two of them to her wrists.
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.
Vondrousova returned to action in October, by which time she was ranked outside the world’s top 100. She reached the third round at the Australian Open and the second at the French Open. Her warm-up for Wimbledon was in Berlin, where she lost in the third round to a top-10 player in Maria Sakkari.
“I had a cast last year at this time,” she says. “It was impossible (to imagine this happening). I was watching my best friend here playing quallies (qualifiers). I was a tourist.
“When I was coming back from injury, I didn’t know what was going to happen, if I could play at that level again. This seems impossible. Even on grass, I didn’t play well before. I think it was the most impossible grand slam for me to win, so I didn’t even think of it.
“When we came, I was just like, ‘Let’s try to win a couple of matches’. Now this happened — it’s crazy.”
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 ($3.1m) prize money on some fish for Frankie.
Stepan wasn’t showing much emotion in the player’s box during the match, and had his hand resting over his mouth at some of the most exciting moments. The Athletic asked if that calmness was superstition.
“He’s like this all the time,” the new Wimbledon champion said, smiling. “I think when I came to the box, he cried. I saw him after, and he cried a lot.
“I think that’s the first emotion I saw from him over the eight years (of our relationship),” she laughed. “I think he cried on the wedding day also, but that was it for the eight years, so… That’s it.”
Her mum stayed away for fear of jinxing the result, having been there in Berlin last month, when Vondrousova also lost in the doubles final with Katerina Siniakova.
So, how exactly did a player with no previous pedigree on grass beat Jabeur — the No 6 seed, also runner-up here last year and the most dominant player on this surface in the past three years?
Well, again, patience played a big part.
The thing about Vondrousova is, she’s a fantastic returner and a brilliant shot-maker. Only three players in the top 50 have a better record in 2023 when it comes to percentage of return points won (46.7) — world No 1 Iga Swiatek, fourth-ranked Jessica Pegula and the No 10 Daria Kasatkina.
Before this match, Jabeur’s serve had been nigh on impenetrable. She had won 90 percent 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 percent (four of 10) of her service games today. Vondrousova’s returning was just too good.
Jabeur admitted as much afterwards: “Not serving well did not help. Marketa returned every ball. Even if I did a good serve, she was there. I wish I was able to hold, especially in the first set. Maybe it could have been a different match.”
The very first point of the match oozed confidence from the Czech side of the court, Vondrousova playing a brilliant lob that clipped the baseline. Jabeur took an early break to lead 2-0 but her opponent hit back immediately. She was clinical when she had break points throughout the two sets, capitalising on six of seven. Deep, flat returns on Jabeur’s serve caused trouble and there was so much spin on her shots it made it difficult for her opponent to play her natural, sparky game.
From 4-2 up, Jabeur won just two points in the rest of that first set as Vondrousova dominated. She carried that into the second set too, breaking Jabeur again to go 1-0 up.
It wasn’t just the Tunisian’s serve that needed piecing back together. Her confidence was shaky and it seemed like maybe all that talk of her winning a first grand slam, and being the first North African and first Arab to do, had got to her. She was making uncharacteristic errors, hitting the net all too often.
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.
But that proved short-lived. Vondrousova broke back to make it 3-2 and got the crucial one to go 5-4 up (her sixth break of the match), before serving out for the championship.
Jabeur said before the match she “felt a lot of pressure, was feeling a lot of stress”. Trying to warm up in a black tracksuit, completely forgetting Wimbledon’s almost-all-white rule, might not have helped her nerves. Wimbledon told her to go back inside and change.
It’s now three grand-slam final defeats in 12 months for Jabeur, and this will be a bitter defeat to process. “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.”
She received support from two very different figures after the match: the Princess of Wales and four-time grand slam champion Kim Clijsters.
The Princess gave her a hug and encouraged her to be strong and to come back and finally win Wimbledon. “I told her hugs are always welcome and that was a very nice moment,” Jabeur said.
“Kim was just telling me (she lost her first four finals). I love Kim so much. She’s a great inspiration for me. I grew up watching her a bit. The fact that she takes the time to give me advice and to really hug me, always be there for me, I think it’s priceless.”
Later on, Jabeur analysed the final in more detail, saying: “I think Marketa played the right match to win this final. I think she just put the ball in, slices a lot. I believe that it was a completely different match from the last three that I had.”
Jabeur had gotten used to the big hitting of Petra Kvitova, Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka in the previous three rounds, and Vondrousova’s slower forehand (5mph slower on average compared to those other three) really caught the No 6 seed out.
“So maybe adapting to her rhythm was very difficult for me,” Jabeur says. “Plus the pressure and the stress of the final. I didn’t think she made a lot of mistakes (12 unforced errors, compared to Jabeur’s 31). I thought she served good. I think she played maybe a perfect final for herself.”
Vondrousova also runs all day and her foot speed is breathtaking. With the grass playing slower, helped on Saturday by Centre Court’s roof being closed due to adverse weather, she has been able to neutralise the power of her opponents and get to just about everything.
She agreed that she benefited from the roof being shut.
“Yeah, I think it’s better for me. The roof can help you with your serve. You don’t have to focus on the wind so much. I feel like everything is the same on every side. I think you just have to focus on the game, not on the wind, not even on the sun.
“I think that’s a good thing. I’m used to playing indoors. We practice, in Prague in winter, indoors. I always play good indoors. I was like, yeah, maybe that’s going to help me.”
Jabeur must be sick of the sight of her. Vondrousova has now inflicted three defeats on her in 2023 — something no player has ever done before against the Tunisian in a single season.
Vondrousova started her campaign out in the wilderness of Court Seven and knocked out four seeds just to reach the semis: Veronika Kudermetova (No 12), Donna Vekic (No 21), Marie Bouzkova (No 32) and Pegula (No 4). Against the wildcard and people’s favourite Elina Svitolina in the last four, she produced one of the shots of the tournament — a squash-style Roger Federer-esque flat slice forehand that you can read more about here.
“I was just, like, open-minded (throughout the tournament),” she says of her remarkable run. “I didn’t have much stress, until today. I think you just have to believe in yourself. I was just trying not to think much about the title and everything.
“But when it was 40-0 (in the final game), I couldn’t breathe. I just was thinking to myself, ‘Just be over’.”
Soon it was.
Wimbledon has a new women’s champion — and soon she will have a new tattoo to show for it.
Not bad for a player who had won just a solitary match on these courts before the 2023 tournament.
(Top photo: Julian Finney / Getty Images)
Senior Editor for The Athletic UK. Follow Charlie on Twitter @charliefscott
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Joshua W.
· Sat
Really is a great story. Thank you for covering it. Ons Jabeur psyched herself out, she's going to have to mentally approach major finals in a new way if she's ever going to win one. Vondrousova was so happy go lucky and relaxed as she pretty much said, that nothing seemed to phase her. Was interesting to watch that final with one player really pressing and the other a bit nonplussed.
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Ron M.
· Sat
Fantastic story! Great match. Hope she gets a sponsor soon!
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Sean F.
· Sun
Jabeur played two matches that could've easily been the finals, first vs. the defending champion Rybakina and then against the pre-tournament favorite Sabalenka, and she was so strong mentally. To end such an incredible run with the nervy, disjointed performance that we saw today is especially disappointing. Hopefully next year will finally be her year!
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