ONS IS OUT TO SETTLE SCORES
Jabeur is plotting another revenge job after striking back to power into final
REVENGE is a dish best served with strawberries and cream as far as Ons Jabeur is concerned.
She had already beaten Elena Rybakina, the player who denied her at the last hurdle here 12 months ago, just to get into yesterday’s semi-final.
Now she faces Marketa Vondrousova, an unfancied, unseeded Czech opponent who nevertheless has triumphed against Jabeur at the Australian Open and IndianWells this year.
The 28-year-old Tunisian said: “I guess going for my revenge again is working.
“I’m learning to transform the bad energy into good.
“I was watching the other semifinal and Marketa is a great player.”
Aryna Sabalenka is the world No.2 and would have topped the rankings next week if she had gone a step further.
And she certainly set out as though she intended to.
It was not just that Sabalenka, right, was able to fire down the fastest serve of the competition so far – a 121mph firecracker when the Belarusian was a break point down.
The computer boffins measuring every aspect of the championships later pointed out that her average shot speed during the match – 74mph – was three miles quicker than the men have been hitting on average all tournament.
Jabeur eventually cracked on the ninth point of the first set tiebreak when her forehand drive was called long.
She challenged immediately and Hawkeye showed the call was correct by about a millimetre and Sabalenka had the mini-break.
Three points later she had secured the set.
The intensity continued for the opening four games of the second set and then, out of nowhere, Jabeur was broken to love following a double fault.
That was when she came up with Plan B.
“For me it was just one serve, one game,” said Jabeur. “I just wanted to try to break her.
“It was very difficult for me to return her serve, especially if she was mixing a lot. Even the speed was difficult.
“But I was like, honestly, I’m not going to give a s***. I’m just going to go in and hit my return.
“She missed some shots that did help me stay in the game. I was fighting every point.
“We just waited for a little bit of a chance and that’s what happened.”
Jabeur reeled off the last four games of the second set and she stayed on a roll into the third.
But it took four match points to get the job done.
“When I had the match point on her serve, the crowd was cheering for me,” Jabeur said.
“I was like, ‘Please, please, don’t cheer – she will get angry and she will ace me’.
“Sure enough she got so angry that she aced me.”
But with a final ace of her own, Jabeur served notice that she is ready to go one step further and become the first African to win the Wimbledon crown.
“For me there is one goal – I’m going for it,” she said. “I will prepare 100 percent.
“Hopefully I can make history not just for Tunisia but for Africa.”
Sabalenka, 25, said: “I had so many opportunities.
“I didn’t play my best tennis today. It was just, like, a combo of everything.
“A little bit of nerves, a little bit of luck for her at some points – I was a little bit emotionally down, then she was up.”
I was fighting every point, waiting for a chance