By Richard Pagliaro | @TennisNow | Thursday July 11, 2024
Photo credit: Robert Prange/Getty
Wimbledon—Tears welled in Donna Vekic’s eyes as spiking pain stung her right forearm and legs.
The unseeded Vekic was two points from the Wimbledon final today only to see Jasmine Paolini dig in and prevail 2-6, 6-4, 7-6(8) in a wildly exhilarating and epic semifinal to surge into her second straight Grand Slam final at Wimbledon.
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A valiant Vekic was up a break in the final set then later saved two match points to force the final tiebreaker.
In the breaker, Vekic led 8-7 before Paolini pulled out the last three points in the longest-ever Wimbledon ladies’ singles semifinal spanning two hours, 51 minutes.
“It was a tough, tough match,” Vekic said afterward. “I believed that I could win until the end. She played some amazing tennis. All congrats to her. She definitely deserved it.”
An understandably distraught Vekic shed tears both on court and in her post-match presser.
Afterward, Vekic said her tears were from the intense pain she felt in her forearm and her legs.
“I thought I was going to die in the third set,” Vekic said. “I had so much pain in my arm, in my leg. It was not easy out there, but I will recover.
“I was more crying because I had so much pain, I didn’t know how I could keep playing.”
Vekic hit 16 more winners (42 to 36), earned twice as many break points (14 to 7), won seven more points in the match (118 to 111), hit her average first serve about 13 miles an hour faster, and smacked successive winners to take an 8-7 lead in the breaker—two points from the biggest win of her life.
The seventh-seeded Paolini refused to let her get any closer making history as the first Italian woman to reach the Wimbledon singles final.
The physical and emotional toll of playing her fourth consecutive three-setter, including her fifth in six tournament matches, drained a disconsolate Vekic in an agonizing defeat.
“My team tells me that I can be proud of myself,” Vekic said. “It’s tough right now. It’s really tough. For sure I will need to take couple of days to see everything.
“Yeah, I don’t know, it’s tough to be positive right now. It was so close. I had a lot of chances.”
