Marketa Vondrousova surprised everyone, including herself, by winning the Wimbledon final against Ons Jabeur

Women’s tennis had stopped us getting used to that. For months, a good year even, we hailed the stability found at the top of the hierarchy, with a trio of bosses (Iga Swiatek – Aryna Sabalenka – Elena Rybakina) clearly in the process of breaking away from the lot. And then, it took a Wimbledon, decidedly become in turn for a few years the field of all possible oddities, for our well-established certainties to be shattered.

Marketa Vondrousova, 24, 42nd in the world, had certainly already proven her immense talent by reaching the final of Roland-Garros 2019 at not even 20 years old (she was then 38th). But in the meantime, she had endured two operations on her left wrist. And above all, she had won only one match in her life at Wimbledon and four in total on grass (main circuit), where her extremely closed forehand grip was, for many experts, a rather prohibitive technical handicap.

From there to say that the Olympic vice-champion of Tokyo in 2021 came as a tourist to London, there is only one step that we will not cross, but not far. This is what she did last year by coming to support her friend and doubles partner Miriam Kolodziejova in qualifying, when she herself had her wrist in a splint, some time after having suffered her second operation. It was perhaps, at that time, the bottom of the wave for Marketa, relegated beyond the top 100 and dropped by its sponsors.

Since then, the native of Sokolov had certainly started to redo the icing on the circuit. But from there to crunch the apple (or rather the strawberry) for so long at Wimbledon? Beat clients like Veronika Kudermetova (12th), Donna Vekic (21st), Marie Bouzkova (33rd) Jessica Pegula (4th), Elina Svitolina and Ons Jabeur (6th) in quick succession. No. “For me, it seemed impossible to win here, I hadn’t even considered it.she was ecstatic. At the start of the tournament, my goal was just to try and win a few matches. Especially since I didn’t have an easy painting. And then it happened what happened. That’s crazy. Tennis is crazy.”

Crazy, the word is out. We don’t know if Marketa Vondrousova’s coronation is crazy, but it is certainly one of the biggest Grand Slam surprises of recent years, comparable (or not far) to that of her compatriot Barbora Krejcikova at Roland-Garros. in 2021 or Emma Raducanu at the US Open the same year. The person concerned did not believe in it so much that she had left her husband at home to do “cat-sitting”, before bringing him urgently for the final.

A final that she won perhaps also because she had less pressure than the Tunisian, who carried the weight of an entire country and even an entire continent on her shoulders. While for the Czech Republic, definitely inexhaustible breeding ground of champions, it is business as usual. In the wake of that of Karolina Muchova at Roland-Garros, this final was, since the beginning of the 2010s, the 10th for a Czech player in a Grand Slam. For now four titles, after Petra Kvitova’s double at Wimbledon (2011-14) and, we talked about it, Krejcikova’s coronation in Paris two years ago.

Moral: you definitely have to always be wary of a Czech, everywhere, all the time. Particularly when she is left-handed and plays at Wimbledon, Martina Navratilova having also won her first two coronations there under the Czechoslovak banner, before being naturalized American. For Vondrousova, her title will earn her access to the top 10 for the first time on Monday, and will cost her coach, Jan Mertl, a tattoo with whom she had made a bet. Like what, she still believed in it maybe a little…