Marketa Vondrousova snaps Elina Svitolina’s run, sets up Wimbledon final with Ons Jabeur | Tennis News – Times of India

LONDON: Marketa Vondrousova was a long way off. A couple of surgeries on the left wrist, six months on the sidelines, her ranking had dropped out of the top-100. She was without a clothing contract. Last year, she sat on the sidelines, her hand in a cast, watching her best friend Miriam Kolodziejova play the qualifying tournament in Roehampton.
While the left-hander’s heady range has delighted Wimbledon, her tattoos have become the rage. Her body art is unusual, running across her arms, like an intricate pattern on a bedspread. There’s a message in there too, ‘no rain, no flowers’.

The world No. 42 would know a thing or two about that.
Vondrousova, 24, on Thursday became the first unseeded woman to make the Wimbledon final in the Open Era, when she topped the crowd favourite, comeback mom Elina Svitolina 6-3, 6-3 in a clash of unseeded players.
In the title match on Saturday, Vondrousova takes on Ons Jabeur, the sixth-seeded Tunisian. Fans on Centre Court lifted Jabeur from the depths of a set-down and a break down in the second against the second-seeded Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka for a 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-3 win.

In the first of the semifinals on Centre Court, Vondrousova, who made the Roland Garros final as a teenager in 2019, held off a late charge by the Ukrainian, who gave birth to her daughter Skai nine months ago.
Svitolina waded in on a wave of support, pushing the pause button on what looked like Vondrousova’s charge to a 5-0 lead. The 28-year-old made a dent to 4-3, but that was all she was allowed on the day.
Even at the very start of the match, when Svitolina was in charge of the exchanges, opening up the court and going for her shots, it appeared that the former world No. 3 would need her best game to come together to beat the 24-year-old Czech.

On the other hand, Vondrousova wasn’t serving bullets, she was landing her serves where she wanted to. In the corners, on the lines. The options on her forehand were too many to list.
One particular shot that she struck on the run, late in the opening set, with Svitolina serving to stay in the set, cut right through the court, like a knife.
“I never practised that shot,” a smiling Vondrousova said. “I couldn’t play (regular) forehand, so that was just the one thing I could do. For me, it just comes naturally.”