No. 17 seed Elena Rybakina became Kazakhstan’s first representative player to win an individual Grand Slam championship with a 3-6, 6-2, 6-2 victory over No. 3 Ons Jabeur.
After sealing his first championship point with a service winner, Rybakina celebrated the 1 hour and 48 minute victory with a fist bomb.
In the first Wimbledon title match among the first Grand Slam finalists of the open era, 23-year-old Rybakina also became the youngest woman to lift the Venus Rosewater Dish from 21-year-old Petra Kvitova. , in 2011. It is now the fourth. the youngest major active champion of the Hologic WTA Tour, older than just Iga Swiatek, Bianca Andreescu and Emma Raducanu.
Elena Rybakina’s route to the WimbledonR1 title: [LL] CoCo Vandeweghe 7-6 (2), 7-5R2: Bianca Andreescu 6-4, 7-6 (5) R3: Zheng Qinwen 7-6 (4), 7-5R4: Petra Martic 7-5, 6-3QF: Ajla Tomljanovic 4-6, 6-2, 6-3SF: [16] Simona Halep 6-3, 6-3F: [3] Ons Jabeur 3-6, 6-2, 6-2
Wimbledon is the third title in Rybakina’s career and the first since Hobart 2020. In between, he had lost four consecutive finals, as well as last year’s bronze medal playoff at the Tokyo Olympics.
Wimbledon reaction:
Rybakina defeated two previous Slam winners along the way, Andreescu in the second round and Simona Halep in the semifinals. Her win over Jabeur was her first win against a Top 10 player since she beat Garbiñe Muguruza in the Tokyo Olympic quarterfinals.
Rybakina’s best previous Grand Slam match was at Roland Garros 2021, where she defeated Serena Williams to reach the quarterfinals before losing to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. This year’s Wimbledon was only the second time he played in the main draw of the championships. In her debut last year, Rybakina made the fourth round before falling to Aryna Sabalenka.
Jabeur also leaves Wimbledon after making history. She has spent much of her career as a pioneer in her country and region and is the first Tunisian and Arab woman to reach a Grand Slam final.
Management of the party: the Jabeur, of first level, lost little time when prevailing to the party. In the first set, his drop shot and his passes were in the song, and he used his variety to constantly put Rybakina in awkward positions.
Rybakina made 17 unforced errors in the first game, many of which conceded their service to fall behind 2-1. Meanwhile, a good show of service from Jabeur offered little opportunity to turn the whole upside down. The world number 2 only lost four service points in total during the opening. And although Rybakina seemed to have settled halfway through, he fell with another sequence of cheap errors to lose the last eight points.
Rybakina’s comeback from the second set was due both to increasing his attacking play and offering one of the best defenses of his career. He increased his first-serve percentage from 58% to 63%, but his move was a crucial component of this step in the game.
Throughout the second set, Rybakina repeatedly chased Jabeur’s throws, and then offered the touch needed to hit the winners from a fine angle. After breaking Jabeur in the first game of the set, Rybakina avoided a change of momentum by surviving three break points to maintain the 3-1 lead.
Now, it was Jabeur’s turn to fall, filtering out impatient mistakes to stay behind a double break. Rybakina tied the game with minimal commotion, sinking four unreturned services to close the score.
With the increase in tension on the center court, Rybakina maintained his level when the third set began. It broke immediately, overtaking Jabeur again at a point that is often Tunisian territory. Jabeur dragged Rybakina onto the court with a clever short slice, but it was Rybakina who was able to stop the volley.
As in the second set, Rybakina faced the biggest challenge for his leadership halfway through the decision. Jabeur moved to the triple break point after a throw that denied the net and a perfect lob, but Rybakina’s service was up to the task of defending them, and held on 4-2. with a safe volley.
After overcoming this test, Rybakina got the win, breaking Jabeur again 5-2 and then serving the game at his first chance. He finished the day with four aces, bringing his tournament total to 53 and 29 winners to 33 unforced errors.
Rybakina on overcoming nerves: “I was super nervous. Yesterday I did a good workout. But in the evening I already started to feel too nervous. In the morning too. But I was just trying to tell myself it’s a match. And already I had experience, I mean, for me the worst thing is that if you’re up, you lose the game, unfortunately I had a lot of games like this, so maybe it helped me a little bit.
“I was trying to convince myself that it could happen again, and I hope it’s not the last time I’m in the final. Neither the first nor the last. I’ve already done a great job with my team. With those words .I was trying to calm down.
“Ons, he played well. He needed time to adapt to his game. But then I thought I would fight to the end, whatever it was. I just tried to focus on every point because it was very hard. It was super I think that since I was physically nervous, I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, but in the end I was just running into all those drops.
“I think it was the first time really when I ran so much into all these complicated Ons shots.”
Rybakina about his calm reactions to the victory: “I’m always very calm. I don’t know what should happen. When I was giving the speech at the end, I was thinking, ‘I’m going to cry right now,’ but of some “I can handle it. Maybe later, when I’m alone in my room, I’ll cry non-stop. I don’t know.”
“Maybe because I think I can do it deep inside. But at the same time there are too many emotions. I was just trying to stay calm. Maybe someday you’ll see a big reaction from me, but unfortunately not today.”
Rybakina on what he showed: “Maybe I showed that you don’t always have to have a great team from a young age, because I didn’t do it until I was 17 or 18. So I think that’s the most important thing, that everyone, regardless of their financial situation, no matter who they are, can play and achieve many great results.
“And to myself that I can really win a Grand Slam. Believe more in myself, and maybe I can win more Grand Slam. Who knows? But sure that’s the goal, and that’s why I’ll work.”