The first thing Ons Jabeur saw on entering the locker room at Wimbledon for the first this year was a photograph of Elena Rybakina with last year’s trophy.
The reminder of the lost final is constant, having been a set up only to be broken down by the Kazakh’s power game. It ate away at her but has ultimately become the motivation to go one better.
The Tunisian never played on grass growing up but said her love of playing football on the surface has made it a natural fit. She joked after her first-round match, “Maybe I pretend to be Cristiano Ronaldo playing here.”
There is a levity to Jabeur on and off court, cracking jokes and sharing moments of fun with the crowd even in tense moments. There are the footballing skills – her way of venting frustration to kick a ball away rather than throw a racket – or the tweener returns when the ball has gone dead in a rally.
It’s no surprise that at home they call her the ‘Minister for Happiness’ – where one wonders what the response will be should she go one better than a year ago judging by the thousands who thronged to her homecoming as runner-up a year ago. And in the stands at Wimbledon, she seems universally loved.
It is not just the joy with which she plays but the brand of tennis – a mercurial mix of drop shots, slices and unconventional returns.
After winning a tight quarter-final against Rybakina yesterday 6-7, 6-4, 6-1 she joked she would have rather that was the result in the final a year ago. She now faces up to another power player in Aryna Sabalenka for a place in a second successive Wimbledon final.
The pair had been playing partners on the practice courts at Wimbledon prior to the tournament and have met once before at Wimbledon – at the 2021 quarter-final stage with the Belarusian winning. Jabeur looks far more accomplished on the grass now and insisted she had made changes in light of the Rybakina loss in 2022.
She said: “I think I’m hitting better, I’m more confident in my shots, serve wise I think it’s getting better and it definitely needs to get better especially playing players like her or Aryna. You always need to be serving great.”
That is backed up by numbers. Of the players left in the draw, she tops the statistics for most unreturned first serves (51 per cent). She also leads the entire Wimbledon field for points won on her first and second serve (81 and 54 respectively).
And while the rich tapestry of shot making remains, she has adapted with the rest of the women’s game and also gone for greater power when it comes to her ground strokes.
“Most of all I think I was hitting fast,” she said after the three-set win over Rybakina.” If you want to hit hard, I’m ready to hit hard too. I think I showed to myself that I can stand up against these players. It’s great proof for me to start the game and to be confident and to go 100 per cent. I have nothing to lose. I’m going to play the like the second and third set I played today.”
Jabeur still has not watched back last year’s Wimbledon final. Even catching snippets of it are hard such as from the most recent episodes of the Netflix series Break Point.
But similarly, there are no regrets over the way she played. She said: “I believe last year I wasn’t ready to play this kind of match. It happened for a reason.
“I have learned a lot from the final last year. Definitely very proud of myself for the improvement that I did mentally, physically and with the tennis racket. I had nothing to lose. Especially after losing the first set, I didn’t care. I went for every shot. The way I played, I felt so free on the court.”
Tennis players can be a superstitious bunch. As she arrived on Centre Court, she made sure to sit in a different seat to where she was losing a year ago.
One suspects she will do the same against Sabalenka, who like Jabeur lets her emotions out – more in rage than Jabeurs’ delight. Centre Court will be willing on the Minster for Happiness.
