Stat of the Day: Ons Jabeur becomes first woman since 2014 to reach three straight Wimbledon quarterfinals
She was a quarterfinalist at Wimbledon in 2021 and reached her first Grand Slam final on the grass in 2022.
In the first match of the tournament between Top 10 players, No. 6 Ons Jabeur defeated No. 9 Petra Kvitova at Wimbledon on Monday, 6-0, 6-3, to move through to the quarterfinals for the third year in a row.
It’s something that hasn’t been done in a long time—Jabeur is the first woman to reach three straight quarterfinals at Wimbledon in nine years.
The last time it happened was between 2012 and 2014, when Kvitova and Sabine Lisicki both featured in the quarterfinal line-up all three years. Both players had longer streaks, too—Kvitova reached five straight from 2010 to 2014, and Lisicki reached four straight from 2011 to 2014.
Jabeur was a quarterfinalist at Wimbledon in 2021, falling to Aryna Sabalenka, and a finalist here in 2022, falling to Elena Rybakina. She reached the first Major final of her career here last year.
Kvitova had won four of the pair’s five previous meetings, but they hadn’t played on grass in four years, and Jabeur has become one of the most dangerous grass-court players on the women’s tour over the last few years, going 25-5 on the surface since the start of 2021 coming into this one.
And she was in control from start to finish on Monday, winning the first set at love, and then—after Kvitova got on the board with a hold in the first game of the second set—reeling off another four games in a row for a 6-0, 4-1 lead.
Kvitova put up some late resistance, winning the next two games to close in to 4-3 in the second set, but Jabeur won two quick love games to close it out after just 63 minutes on court.
Jabeur was ready for a second set fightback from Kvitova.
“Winning 6-0 against someone like Petra, you can expect to be beaten 6-0 the next set, so I tried to tell myself that the match is starting in the second set,” she said.
“Kept going. Tried to play point by point. Honestly, it was going very well for me.”
Up next for Jabeur will be Rybakina in a quarterfinal rematch of last year’s final, which the Kazakh won, 3-6, 6-2, 6-2.