Having come so terrifyingly close to winning the tournament last year, Wimbledon represents a line still to be crossed for Ons Jabeur. Not for a second does tennis work on a reliable schedule but prior to that final, it had felt like perhaps the sport was willing to compromise just this once. It was a natural progression that the majority of fans could get behind. She’d done her time by experiencing the setbacks and in turn, had earned it. It would have all made sense. The routine can rarely be relaxed by those looking to master it and a Wimbledon title at the then-age of 28 would have felt like perfect moment to breath a little.
I’m fascinated by those that lose at the highest of levels. It’s rare that athletes offer insight into the impact of defeat. It’s a fragile uncertainty that takes time that top-level tennis doesn’t really offer and so the debris is often still falling in the heads of players that walk themselves out there mere days later.
Jabeur would later clarify in an interview that she knew winning and having a child weren’t inherently linked because both could still happen independently of the other. But the trajectory of life is never more vulnerable than it is following failure. To become a parent would require an entire separation from her career for a prolonged period of time with no promises of return. Win and she would have felt like she’d earned the right to enjoy other possibilities. In losing, her freedom to choose was still her own but acting on that felt immediately more complex. Did she feel like she had done all that she could in the sport to leave her satisfied if she could not come back? The answer, it would appear, near a year later, is still no.
We either get over things or we don’t. Watching Jabeur over the last year, I’ve never felt like she’s truly forgiven herself for not winning that final match. The greatest players are the ones that make a habit out of moving on. Jabeur, now 29, knows of the heartbreak that tennis provides weekly. The wheel turns across the back of very personal disasters and Jabeur, left holding the wrong trophy a year ago, felt the emotion crumple her when faced with her own.
Jabeur’s career is in a difficult place because everyone wants to see her win and everyone seems absolutely ready to sympathise tremendously if she doesn’t. She’s so obviously the face of feel-good that the urge to just reach out and thrust her across the gap separating her from major glory is striking but the sensation of feeling sorry for her should she fail feels more natural because it fits with the pattern of her journey so far. It’s OK to lose but forgetting that when playing is critical and you see in Jabeur’s face when she contests these important matches that she’s become just a little bit too comfortable embracing the low-points.
There’s too much going on for her. Becoming the first African and Arab woman to reach these stages is huge. She looks up at the box and there’s her husband and their joint hopes for their future. How her overall career will be viewed is seen through these finals that are happening now, years after it all started and when at least 80% of it is already over. There’s real validity in the argument that a tennis player can not be solely defined by number of major titles won but when the player in question turns themselves in knots over their inability to win one, it becomes hard to overlook. Being good enough to win a major means absolutely everything up to and including that last match. I find myself hoping that, should she make it back there once again, that she’ll find calm in the madness. I hope and I doubt.
If Jabeur is going to win a major, it’ll be at Wimbledon, but it needs to be soon. 2023 saw her expectant. Part of her might well have fooled herself into believing she’d win easily, as though the groundswell of support driven by her natural likeability would be enough. Her performance in that match was nervy and scattered, unsettled further by the knowledge that she was undeniable favourite. She seemed to see the headlines announcing her surprise defeat right on up until the time that they were being written and there’s been no visible confidence in her game of late that leads me to believe that she stands any more of a chance of going a step further this time around. There’s external factors at play such as injury and, more recently, illness, but these have played out in conjunction with the fact that she still at times appears burdened by the fact that all of her high-profile moments have come to an end in the form of a loss. Those three major finals appearances are as impressive as they are devastating.
Jabeur reached the final last year and if she can do so again, anything can happen. But I don’t think it will for the simple fact that she’s fallen into a category that players fear finding themselves; predictability. Jabeur excels on grass because it’s a unique surface that requires work to properly understand and she has no problem with putting in the hours. It’s because of this, because she’s still a steady feature at the top of the game after all this time, that unfortunately, I don’t think that she’ll get there. When someone proves time and again that they are willing to maximise all that they have and still can’t get the job done, well, maybe they just can’t get the job done.
These are the small realities that the majority of us live with day-after-day. You’re only as good as the best that you have. It all matters only as much as we let it but it’s why, when there’s a difficult internal rational combining your ability to achieve something with a serious long-term life decision, it becomes that much more difficult to walk the shrinking timeline to claim both.
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