Former French Open winner Barbora Krejcikova is flying under the radar at Wimbledon, just like her opponent in the final. A changeable final is developing.
Czech tennis player Barbora Krejcikova has been crowned Wimbledon champion for the first time. The 28-year-old won the underdog final in London against the Italian Jasmine Paolini, who is the same age, 6-2, 2-6, 6-4. After 1:56 hours, the 28-year-old converted the third match point in a nail-biting match and celebrated her second Grand Slam title after the French Open coup in 2021.
She thus crowned herself the successor to her compatriot Marketa Vondrousova. In the men’s singles, defending champion Carlos Alcaraz from Spain will face the Serbian seven-time Wimbledon champion Novak Djokovic in a repeat of last year’s final on Sunday.
Paolini loses second Grand Slam final in a row
Krejcikova can look forward to prize money equivalent to 3.2 million euros. She will move up from 25th place in the world rankings on Monday and return to the top ten as the new number ten.
Paolini, the first Italian Wimbledon finalist, will receive almost 1.7 million euros. A month ago she missed her first Grand Slam title at the French Open, just as she did now at London’s Church Road. In Paris she had no chance against the Polish number one in the world, Iga Swiatek. Now Paolini fought resolutely against defeat, but still had to concede victory to Krejcikova.
Krejcikova starts better in surprise final
This final act of the women’s table was actually impossible to predict. The number 31 seed (Krejcikova) faced the number seven (Paolini). Krejcikova brought experience of finals on the Centre Court at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club from her doubles successes. In 2022 and 2018 she had won the doubles competition at London’s Church Road. A total of seven Grand Slam titles in doubles and three more in mixed doubles are in her success statistics.
In front of 15,000 spectators on Centre Court, Krejcikova got off to a much better start two days after her hard-fought semi-final victory against the clear favorite, former Wimbledon champion Jelena Rybakina from Kazakhstan. The Czech won ten of the first eleven points, but her opponent also botched the start.
Krejcikova initially played more consistently against the Italian, who is the same age, and chased her into the corners. Laura Siegemund’s current doubles partner was ahead by two breaks at 4:1. She served excellently and was halfway through the match after 35 minutes by winning the first set.
Paolini puts a damper behind
However, anyone who thought that Krejcikova would continue to dominate in the second set was mistaken. Paolini impressively took the setback. She left the court after losing the set and was suddenly the better player. The second set clearly went to the Italian.
The decisive set was evenly matched for a long time. The decision was made when Krejcikova secured the first break in the third set to make it 4:3 – with the help of a double fault from Paolini.
In a Wimbledon edition with once again a number of surprises in the women’s singles, numerous title favorites were eliminated one after the other. Australian Open champion Aryna Sabalenka retired with a shoulder injury shortly before her first match. Vondrousova, Swiatek and US Open champion Coco Gauff were eliminated early.
For the six German participants around Angelique Kerber it was already over after the first or second round.
Source: Stern
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