Ons Jabeur, the Tunisian with a magical touch adopted by Wimbledon

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It is now a love story between Wimbledon and Ons Jabeur, the Tunisian who conquered the final for the second time by winning in comeback against the Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka, number 2 in the world (champion, among other things, at the Australian Open) .

The public supported her very much when, trailing 7-6, she was down by a break in the second set. And when she recovered from 2-4 and closed the partial 6-4 with a winning backhand response to Sabalenka’s second, the central player exploded. To re-explode, even stronger, on the ace with which the Tunisian closed the accounts 6-3, after the opponent had annulled four match points.

An example for your country

So who is Ons Jabeur? She is twenty-eight years old, number six in the WTA ranking, she was born in Ksar El Hellal, a town in the north-east of the country, and she took over her racket at the age of 3 thanks to her mother Samira. She moved to Tunis at 13, her dream was to win Roland Garros and she started well, triumphing at the French Junior Open at 16. Since 2017, the year in which she entered the top hundred in the world, there has been a crescendo, with her “different” tennis, made up of short balls and insidious slices, but also powerful lunges and net closures when needed. A game that distinguishes her from all the others and which, together with the ability to attract the sympathy of the public with a spontaneous way of doing and the aptitude for smiling, soon made her a much loved player. Last year at Wimbledon she made history by becoming the first African tennis player, and the first Arab, to reach the final, beaten by the Russian (under the Kazakh federation) Elena Ribakina: a record she underlined at the end of the match, hoping to be inspirational to the people of his country.

It was precisely with Ribakina that she “retaliated” this year by defeating her in the quarterfinals. On Saturday Jabeur, who last year also reached the final at the US Open (lost to Iga Swiatek), will fight for the title against the Czech Marketa Vondrousova, 24 years old, number 42 in the world, one of the many surprises of this edition of the Championships : she is the first unseeded player to reach the last match – eliminating Pegula in the quarterfinals and Svitolina in the semifinals – since 1963, when Billie Jean King succeeded.