Uns Jabir from Tunisia and Czech Marketa Vondrousova reached the final

The semi-final of Wimbledon between Belarusian Arina Sobolenko and Tunisian Uns Jabir, which became the highlight of the tournament, ended with the victory of the African tennis player, who won in three games, having managed to escape in a difficult situation. Thus, Sobolenko missed the chance to get around the world’s first racket Iga Sventek in the world rankings, and Jabir will play in the London Major final for the second year in a row. There, her opponent will be the Czech Marketa Vondrousova, who outplayed the Ukrainian Elina Svitolina in two sets.

Arina Sobolenko’s meeting with Uns Jabir, which lasted almost two and a half hours on the Center Court, became the best match of the women’s tournament. And not only because of the sudden turning point that the Tunisian tennis player managed in the middle of the second game, when everything seemed to be decided. Those who love and understand tennis could not help but admire the very aesthetics of this confrontation between physical strength and game intelligence – a quality that is often not striking as openly as power, but this does not become a less effective trump card.

For Sobolenko, in this case, not only reaching the Wimbledon final was at stake, where she had never played before. With a victory over Jabir, she would also guarantee herself the title of the first racket of the world, overtaking Iga Sventek in the ranking.

By and large, this would be quite natural. The current season is not as successful for the polka as for the Belarusian, who, according to the points scored since the beginning of the year, is ahead of Shventek quite significantly – by 770 points. To repeat the success of her compatriot Victoria Azarenka, who first topped the WTA rankings at the end of January 2012 and stayed at the top for a total of 51 weeks, Sobolenko needed to take the last step, and she seemed to have every chance. The score of personal meetings with Jabir was 3:1 in favor of the Belarusian, who, among other things, turned out to be stronger two years ago at Wimbledon at the quarterfinal stage. In addition, on Tuesday, the Tunisian, who stopped last year’s champion Elena Rybakina in three sets, left much more strength and emotion on the court than Sobolenko, who relatively easily coped with the American Madison Keys.

Of all the key stats going into the semi-finals, Jabir had only one advantage, having won 81% of points on the first serve in her previous five matches.

But this did not help her either in the tie-break of the first game, or in the first half of the second set, during which Sobolenko led 4:2. On the face of the best Arab tennis player in history, frank disappointment was read, and it seemed that she was already barely running along the back line, with difficulty taking her breath between draws. But in the seventh game, Jabir managed to keep her serve, and in the eighth Sabolenko did not realize the opportunity to go into the lead again, twice having “more”. And then the Minsker hurried somewhere, and the psychological advantage passed to her rival, who was just waiting for this. Not the most athletic tennis player, inferior to her opponent in height of 15 cm, suddenly blossomed. Alternating attacks with counterattacks, Jabir, with her rather simple, but wise and productive game, did not allow Sobolenko to regain her peace of mind, without which the reigning Australian Open champion turns into the most ordinary tennis player.

It cannot be said that the Belarusian gave the third set to Jabir almost without a fight, as happened with Rybakina. But the sixth game, in which 14 points were played, turned out to be key. Jabir made a break, and in the last two games she lost only three goals on her serve. Sobolenko did not help either 10 aces or 39 points won by blows right through. Her efforts canceled out 45 unforced errors and the resilience of a rival who returned to the Wimbledon final a year later and has every reason to become the first Arab Grand Slam champion.

There she will meet with the Czech left-hander Marketa Vondrousova, who outplayed the Ukrainian Elina Svitolina in two games, who was extremely exhausted in two three-set marathons against Victoria Azarenka and Iga Sventek. However, it is rather dangerous to give unambiguous forecasts here. The fact is that Vondrousova, the 42nd racket of the world and the first unseeded Wimbledon finalist during the Open Era (since 1968), has an equal balance of meetings with Jabir – 3: 3 – and this year she won them twice.

Evgeny Fedyakov