Elena Rybakina’s the 2022 Wimbledon women’s singles champion. The Kazakh, was the 17th seed this year in the draw trumped the third-seeded Ons Jabeur in the final on Saturday. The 23-year-old convincingly came from a set down to win 3-6, 6-2, 6-2 in an hour and 48 minutes. This is the first Major of Rybakina’s career in what was her first final in a tournament of this stature.
Beginning the match, Jabeur took control over the proceedings as she broke Rybakina early on the first set. Jabeur’s drop shots were especially lethal and Rybakina looked out of sorts as she tried in vain to play through them. And although she did lose her serve only once, Rybakina’s serve continued to trouble her throughout the set even as Jabeur’s worked like a well-oiled machine on the other side of the net.
Wimbledon: Elena Rybakina’s racquet leaves others’ far behind on the grass
In comparison to how the match had started, the latter two sets saw the resurgence of the younger player. Rybakina looked like she’d gotten a second wind and she went about righting all that wasn’t working in her game in the first set. She started reading Jabeur’s game better which helped her score more points on return while improving her own serve percentage and the points won off those.
Jabeur’s problems, meanwhile, compounded as she grew frustrated and began to mistime her shots. While she was able to come up with deceptively-easy-looking angled winners in the first set, the last two sets unfolded into a series of unforced errors for her. In fact, facing match point, with Rybakina serving in the last game of the match, Jabeur hit an unforced error off the backhand to concede the match to her opponent.
In terms of stats, to close out the match, Rybakina had 29 winners to the Tunisian’s 17 and had 33 unforced errors to the latter’s 24. However, where the eventual champion converted four of the six break points she had, Jabeur could convert only two of the 11 that came her way.
Meanwhile, Elena Rybakina will get £2,000,000. Likewise, on account of no points being awarded at Wimbledon this year, neither she nor Ons Jabeur as with the other players won’t get any ranking points.
Photo Credit: AELTC/Florian Eisele