Barbora Krejcikova held off Italian crowd favourite Jasmine Paolini to win the Wimbledon singles title on Saturday, coming through 6-2 2-6 6-4 on a sunlit Centre Court.<\/p>\n
The Czech doubles specialist had dominated the opening set with a near-perfect display but was then rocked by a dazzling Paolini fightback which sent the showpiece into a decider.<\/p>\n
A nervous third set swung Krejcikova’s way when she broke serve at 3-3 and she went on to complete victory on her third match point, adding the Wimbledon title to the French Open crown she captured in 2021.<\/p>\n
It was heartache for the popular Paolini who lost the French Open final a few weeks ago and was bidding to become the first Italian player to win a Wimbledon singles title.<\/p>\n
Krejcikova, who also owns 10 doubles Grand Slam titles, including two at Wimbledon, is the latest in a long line of Czechs to win the singles at Wimbledon, following Marketa Vondrousova’s triumph last year.<\/p>\n
Krejcikova began the match in confident fashion, striking the ball sweetly on her way to a break of serve in the first game before holding for a 2-0 lead.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old from Brno was soon on the hunt for a double break but Paolini weathered some fierce ball-striking in her next service game to get herself on the scoreboard.<\/p>\n
The Centre Court crowd came alive in the fourth game as Paolini showed unbelievable court coverage to stay in the point but to no avail as Krejcikova held for 3-1.<\/p>\n
Paolini was chit-chatting to herself between points, trying to fire herself in the face of a Krejcikova onslaught but another dropped service game left her reeling.<\/p>\n
Dominating the baseline exchanges with her extra power, Krejcikova pouched the opener in 35 minutes and Paolini disappeared off court, presumably for a deep breath.<\/p>\n
The Italian returned with fire in her belly and immediately the momentum shifted as she seized on the first Krejcikova dip to move into a 3-0 lead with some fluent winners.<\/p>\n
Suddenly it was Krejcikova who looked tight with consecutive double faults adding more fuel to the Paolini fire but the Czech steadied down to avoid slipping 4-0 behind.<\/p>\n
It was all Paolini though in the second set as she rode a wave of fervent crowd support to take the final to a decider.<\/p>\n
The momentum looked to be with Paolini but she wavered at 3-3 in the decider with a double fault handing over a break of serve.\u00a0Krejcikova<\/span>\u00a0was rock-solid on serve as the title inched closer but looked consumed by nerves at 5-4.<\/p>\n Two match points came and went but she finally go the job done at the third attempt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Barbora Krejcikova held off Italian crowd favourite Jasmine Paolini to win the Wimbledon title<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":965598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[225],"tags":[1206,1207,1189,668,1208],"class_list":["post-965597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport","tag-barbora-krejcikova","tag-jasmine-paolini","tag-tennis","tag-wimbledon","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=965597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/965598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=965597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=965597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=965597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}