Tunisian Jabeur scripts history
London, UK - Ons Jabeur's historic Wimbledon campaign saw her reach the women's quarterfinals on Monday, beating Poland's 2020 French Open champion Iga Swiatek 5-7, 6-1, 61 in their fourth round match.
The 26 year old Tunisian is the first Arab woman to reach the last-eight at Wimbledon and will face Belarus second seed Aryna Sabalenka who defeated Elena Rybakina 6-3, 4-6, 6-3.
Sabalenka will be playing in her first Grand Slam quarterfinal.
Jabeur celebrated victory with a fist pump and a yell of delight but for once she was not a lone Tunisian voice as some spectators burst out into song.
"Tunisians are everywhere, I got to say," she said.
"Yeah, they were singing actually a football song. I felt the need to sing with them also.
"I felt so happy that I wanted, like, to hear more. I was doing like this to hear them (cupping a hand to one ear)"
Jabeur's exploits in the past few weeks have give huge momentum to her mission to encourage more Arab women, especially North African, to take up the sport.
She admitted, though, that to get to where she is now has taken a lot of resilience to overcome setbacks.
"Maybe one of them was 2018, I started really bad the season, winning no matches," she said. "I was doubting myself a lot. I think early in my career, after the juniors, when I didn't see the results that I wanted, when I was seeing the juniors that I played with breaking the top-50, top-40,it was very difficult for me.
"I've worked hard to earn my place here."
However, with her maiden WTA title under her belt - the first Arab woman to achieve that - and now her run to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon she could not have done more to raise the profile of herself and her broader goal.
"It is very important to me," she said.
"I have seen it, heard it, a lot of times coming here on tour from where I come, I need to gain my respect either with the players or anyone around here.
"I just want to give the example for many generations coming from North Africa, from my country, from the African continent, that it's not impossible, that we can do it.
"I'm trying to carry this message for a very long time. Hopefully it is working."