VPerhaps it’s not the easier part to end up standing on the pitch with a magnificent trophy in hand. With restlessness in the heart and a confusion in the head that does not allow for clear thoughts. With the feeling that the audience would rather have seen the opponent win and with the awareness that somehow the size of this moment could not be grasped. The winner takes it all? Not necessarily.
It took a long time for Yelena Rybakina to let us peek inside her on this bright, bright English summer’s day, but why do you always expect it? The world of emotions is large and varied, and not everyone has to recognize, understand or share what happens in it right away.
Great nervousness
What is certain is that the native Russian, who plays for Kazakhstan, deservedly won against Ons Jabeur from Tunisia (3: 6, 6: 2, 6: 2), the favorite of the hearts, in Wimbledon on Saturday. At the beginning of the first week of the tournament, Rybakina would have been happy to reach the second, but then things somehow developed very logically and unimpressively.
And it is also certain – the winner later said – that she was extremely nervous the evening before the first big final of her life and also the next morning. She tried to calm herself with the thought that somehow it was a game like others and it certainly wouldn’t be her last chance at a big title. But for the first half hour, it didn’t look as if this attempt at reassurance was even beginning to work.
Ons Jabeur seemed to be handling things with a light hand and the audience braced themselves for a sunlit, boisterous celebration; the jubilation would probably have been heard as far away as North Africa. But when it came to transporting the superiority from the first set into the second and continuing to give the opponent the feeling that the whole story might be a little too big for her, Ons Jabeur lost himself in the subtleties of her game.
She tried to do magic, but not every trick worked, and with avoidable mistakes she opened the gate to the game for Rybakina. The sovereignty from the first set was gone, the opponent now served better and brought speed into play, and Jabeur sometimes seemed overwhelmed with this speed. The other had become more and more offensive and developed a lot of pressure, she said afterwards. “And unfortunately I didn’t find a solution for that today.”
Tiny fist
She lost her last chance in the middle of the third set when the art shot, with which she wanted to convert the second of three break points, landed just off the sideline. And with that, the scales of this final finally fell on the side of Yelena Rybakina, who was so nervous at first. Without detours and with full power ahead, she sank the last balls of the game into the competitor’s field and then it was over. Simply that way.
No leap of joy, no cheering, no pirouette of emotions. Yelena Rybakina reacted as she has reacted for years after every game, whether in the first round at the Eastbourne tournament or on the most famous tennis court in the world; there was nothing more than the hint of a shy smile and a tiny fist.
But of course this impression of a strange ending also somehow fitted in with the mixed feelings that had accompanied this finale from the start. The All England Club tried to set an example with its decision not to allow any Russian or Belarusian players because of the war in Ukraine. But then Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge had to present the trophy to a young woman who had spent most of her life as a Russian in Russia.
The day would have ended differently if Ons Jabeur had won, that’s for sure. The much-loved Ambassador of the Arab World did her lap of honor on Center Court with the much smaller, plainer bowl in hand, and it wasn’t hard to see how sad she was at those moments. But she recovered quickly.
There is nothing to regret, she said an hour after the game. “I gave everything today. I lost a lot of finals at the beginning of my career, later I won. And I know I will come back and win a Grand Slam tournament for sure. This is tennis, losing is part of it.”
Losing at Wimbledon, avoidable as it may have been, will not change her popularity and the role she is playing more than ever with her recent successes in the world of tennis. But you could hear how wonderfully approachable the young woman from Tunisia is when she ended the press conference with the words: “Thank you very much, folks. It was great talking to you guys. See you next year.”
And you could see the difference as she walked, small bowl in hand, to a group of fans waiting for her at the foot of the media center’s stairs. The loser standing small? Not necessarily.
