With Wimbledon still on her mind, Ons Jabeur is playing free at Roland Garros
The Tunisian is banking on the power of experience to kick in at some point. But she is in a race against time.
Video not available in your country . It was the last thing on Earth that Ons Jabeur wanted to do: sit on the edge of a bed, watching every agonizing minute of her devastating loss to heavy underdog Marketa Vondrousova in last year’s Wimbledon final.
“I really wanted to kill Matt [Critchley, producer of the recent documentary about Jabeur, This Is Me],” Jabeur said in Madrid a few weeks ago.
But Critchley kept pushing Jabeur to watch, convinced that it was essential to the project, even though Jabeur continued to protest.
“I don’t know what’s positive about this.” she kept telling him. “I want to kill you for making me watch that.”
After watching the replay, she told Critchley, “Okay, you got the scene, good job. Let’s move on.”
Perhaps reviewing the match helped her purge those painful memories. For here Jabeur is again, now 29 and healthy following early-season struggles with a bum knee. On Sunday at Roland Garros, Jabeur positioned herself as a contender for the title with an impressive 6-4, 6-4 victory over rising star Clara Tauson.
A three-time Grand Slam finalist and a Roland Garros quarterfinalist (despite being compromised by injury) for the first time last year, Jabeur told reporters after her latest win that she feels more prepared for the challenge this time around.
“Last year, I didn’t have enough time (to get healthy). I didn’t even think I would be ready. But this year I really have the desire to play. I have a strong will.”
A strong will is critical, but so is a strong set of nerves. That has proved to be the biggest hurdle for Jabeur in, among other matches, two heartbreaking Wimbledon finals. But while Jabeur has been bent by misfortune, she doesn’t appear to have been broken. She’s dropped just one set through four rounds at Roland Garros.
“I’m here. I know what to do exactly,” Jabeur said, alluding to lessons she took from last year’s quarterfinal loss. She said she would prepare differently for what promises to be a highly competitive quarterfinal with No. 3 seed Coco Gauff. “I think that in terms of maturity, I’m more mature than I was last year.”
Jabeur acknowledged that she was mentally out of sorts in the run-up to the current major. While maintaining her No. 9 ranking, she won just one match this year in her first three outings on clay. Moving into the European heart of the clay swing, she was solid at the Madrid 1000 (she lost in the quarterfinals) but took a surprising loss in her Rome opener to Sofia Kenin.
The Tunisian said that the toll of her knee injury in the early season has been more mental than physical.
“I was really practicing a lot . . . doing incredible shots,” she said. “I was winning almost all the practice sets against other players. But then during the matches, it was more difficult for me. So I had to be more patient.”
Time is running short for Jabeur to slough off whatever mental struggles she’s been facing.
The journey to Wimbledon is becoming a sprint now, picking up pace for all the players. Few of them have as much at stake as Jabeur, although it may not serve her well to dwell on that. When she froze up and lost the 2022 final to Elena Rybakina, everyone’s heart went out to her. She was a feel-good story for a sport forever seeking validation for developing a more diverse player and fan base.
I’m here. I know what to do exactly. I think that in terms of maturity, I’m more mature than I was last year. Ons Jabeur
Having also reached the US Open final, Jabeur seemed poised at the end of 2022 to become one of the new faces of the WTA. She was an ideal candidate: a blithe spirit, a happy-go-lucky warrior dubbed—with no objection from Jabeur—the “Minister of Happiness.”
However, a lot of the joy Jabeur felt, and so freely shared with the tennis audience, in 2022 was evaporated at Wimbledon last year, replaced by pathos. Once again, she made the final—then tightened up and hobbled through like a deer frozen in the headlights. Out of all the things people reasonably expected in that match, a reprisal of the previous year’s performance was at the bottom of the list.
Dealing with that situation is going to be a significant challenge for Jabeur, which is why her performance over the next week could prove pivotal.
“I would say I’m doing two things,” Jabeur said, after eking out a 6-4, 7-6 (5) third-round win over ever-tricky Leylah Fernandez. “I’m rebuilding, definitely, but also not everything that I’ve learned, or I have in me, is completely gone. It’s still there.”
Jabeur is banking on the power of experience to kick in at some point. But she is in a race against time.
“My experiences are helping me be the player that I am today, the player that can pull off some matches like this,” she said after the Fernandez win. “I still continue to believe in myself and be patient because I think this year has been much harder than last year.”
On some sleepless nights, Jabeur revealed, she replays and analyzes matches in her mind. She thinks about what she could, or should, have done differently in any given match. She said, “I’m evolving a lot.”
A win at Roland Garros would constitute a great evolutionary leap for Jabeur, and alleviate much of the pressure that she might face at Wimbledon. That would be balm for her spirit. And who wants to see a sad Minister of Happiness?
