OTTAWA CHEERS LOCAL HERO
Dabrowski wins at Australian Open
Ottawa tennis fans were cheering for hometown star Gabriela Dabrowski on Sunday after she and her mixed doubles partner, Mate Pavic of Croatia, won a dramatic mixed-doubles final at the Australian Open.
The eighth-seeded Dabrowski and Pavic came back to beat fifthseeded Timea Babos of Hungary and India’s Rohan Bopanna 2-6, 6-4, 11-9 in the championship match.
Dabrowski, 25, graciously thanked Australian fans for their love of doubles tennis, dedicated her win to a fellow competitor, the now-retired Australian Jarmila Gajdosova, and credited her coaches back home with helping her to hone what turned out to be a winning forehand.
But she saved the most emotional thanks for her parents, mother Wanda and father Yurek, who actually learned to play tennis to coach his daughter as a junior.
“Just a really special shout-out to my parents at home,” Dabrowski said in a television interview, adding that “ever since I was a little girl, Australia was one of the things I couldn’t stop talking about ...
“It’s just really awesome. I did it. I made it here. So thanks, Mom and Dad, for all your sacrifices and making this dream come true.”
Back home in Blossom Park, Wanda Dabrowski couldn’t watch the final match but was awakened in the middle of the night by Yurek’s cheering.
“I can’t watch them,” she said with a laugh. “I get too nervous. ... For me, I feel everything she’s feeling.”
She’s proud of Gabriela’s success as a player who has advanced into the top ranks of doubles players — without supports like full-time coaching — by dint of character and hard work.
“She’s gaining more confidence in herself all the time and really getting clear on who she is and what she wants,” Wanda Dabrowski said. “I’m just really proud of who she is becoming as a person in addition to how she performs as an athlete.
“She has a high level of integrity, she has a solid value system and she’s navigating a world in tennis that is very challenging, and yet she’s grateful she’s even in that world, that she has an opportunity to play at a professional level.”
Off the court, Dabrowski is a loyal friend — she was Gajdosova’s maid of honour — and stays in close contact with her parents in Ottawa.
On Sunday afternoon, she was already winging her way to another tournament in St. Petersburg, but the family hopes she may make a stop at home in April, when she’ll celebrate her 26th birthday.
“We’re very grateful — we’re very close and technology keeps us in touch,” Wanda Dabrowski said.
It’s another big win for a player who had already become the first Canadian woman to win a Grand Slam title last July when she and then-partner Bopanna took the trophy at the French Open.
Ottawans and Canadians took to Twitter to laud Dabrowski.
“Congratulations Gaby,” Mayor Jim Watson tweeted. “All of Ottawa was cheering you on and we are so proud of your success.”
A Tennis Canada writer explained — for tennis fans — in an online post Sunday why it was such a nail-biter of a match:
“After splitting the first two sets with Babos, the women’s doubles winner in Melbourne, and Bopanna, they were first to get the mini break in the third set super tiebreak only to see their opponents fight back to tie it up at 5-5,” according to the sport’s Canadian governing body. “The two teams remained even until Dabrowski and Pavic secured the decisive mini break at 10-9 when Dabrowski hit a striking return winner on match point.
“With the win, Dabrowski joins Daniel Nestor as the only Canadian to win multiple Grand Slams.”
Adding to the stakes, she did it by defeating Bopanna.
Dabrowski, currently at a careerhigh ranking of No. 15, also reached the women’s doubles quarterfinals in Melbourne with her Chinese partner, Yifan Xu.
After her victory in Paris in June, she told TSN she was excited to have achieved a goal she had dreamed about since childhood.
“It hasn’t sunk in yet,” Dabrowski said. “Could I imagine this? Yes. As a kid it’s something you start out dreaming about. Usually, in the beginning, your goal is to win a singles Grand Slam. We all start out as singles players; some of us transition, some of us don’t. Within the past few years, my focus has shifted toward doubles and mixed doubles.
“It’s definitely a very exciting time. To say I wouldn’t have imagined this would not be the case. I definitely have.”
She called the moment “pure happiness” and said that she wanted to encourage youngsters.
“Hopefully, I can inspire somebody to start playing or continue playing tennis,” Dabrowski said. “You never know what can happen. If I can do it, you can do it, I promise.”
But that modesty is belied by the memories her former coach, Tony Milo. Now running his own academy, he recalled her as a sevenyear-old
“From the very first ball she hit, you could tell she had something,” Milo said in 2010. “Her eyes were so large. She was ready to go. She took it all in. The competitiveness. The focus. It was always, ‘One more. Let’s do it again.’ She was incredibly self-motivated, even then.”
By age nine, she was in the finals of the provincial under-14 girls’ championships. At 13, she was on the court at what was then Scotiabank Place with the likes of John McEnroe and Anna Kournikova for a celebrity event. At 14, she took the title at the Les Petits As tournament in France, the first Canadian player to win one of the world’s most prestigious under-14 tournaments.
She spent her teen years training tirelessly at a Florida tennis school, with her parents supporting her dream — her father took a leave from his job at the Westin Hotel to coach her, manage her career and even serve as hitting partner and racket stringer.
A 2014 interview after she captured the first professional singles title of her career showed her mental toughness.
“I don’t think I’m like Genie (Bouchard), who all of a sudden went to the top,” she said. “But at the same time, I know how good I am, so it’s just a matter of am I going to trust and believe in myself day in and day out and do that when it counts during matches. The level I played today was good enough for today, but I know I still have to be a lot better and put in a lot more hard work physically and mentally to be able to make the next step into the bigger leagues.”
She has made it to the biggest leagues of all, yet after her July win, her friend John Mins-Purdy, a pro at the Ottawa Tennis and Lawn Bowling Club, said she was not only a top up-and-coming doubles player but “a happy person, super-friendly, really nice, an incredibly hard worker.”
It’s just really awesome. I did it. I made it here. So thanks, Mom and Dad, for all your sacrifices and making this dream come true.