An emotional Donna Vekic sparked concern from her team and observers as she openly sobbed in the longest Wimbledon women’s semi-final on record, in her loss to Italian Jasmine Paolini.
After dropping the opening set, after being two games from defeat in each of the last two sets, after twice trailing by a break in the third, Paolini, somehow pulled out the win as her opponent capitulated down the stretch, with her emotions taking over.
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Paolini never had won a match at the All England Club until last week and now will participate in her second consecutive grand slam final, thanks to the rollicking 2-6, 6-4, 7-6 (10-8) victory over the unseeded Vekic across 2 hours, 51 minutes on Centre Court.
Vekic often was in obvious distress, crying between points and while sitting in her changeover chair late in the third set — because, she said afterward, of pain in an arm and a leg — and often looked up at her guest box with a flushed face. She iced her right forearm between games.
Donna Vekic sobs late in the third set. Nine
“Vekic is crying – a lot,” tennis journalist Jose Morgado tweeted.
“I thought I was going to die in the third set,” said Vekic, who repeatedly closed her eyes, sighed or shook her head during her news conference.
“I didn’t know how,” she said, “I could keep playing.”
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Former player Pam Shriver and Vekic’s team express support from the stands. Nine
Consider: Vekic, making her debut in a Slam semi-final, ended up claiming more points (118-111), delivering more winners (42-26) and breaking serve more often (4-3), yet in the end her unforced error count (57)
But Paolini’s never-give-up attitude was apparent at 4-all in the second, when she sprinted with her back to the net to put her racket on a lob, somehow getting it back over the net, and Vekic badly missed an overhead.
Paolini held there to lead 5-4, then broke for the set with a forehand winner, looked up at her guest box — where her relatives and her doubles partner, Sara Errani, were on their feet — and screamed, “Forza!” (“Let’s go!”)
Vekic, playing her fifth three-setter in six matches, headed to the locker room before the last set, recalibrated and came out strong.
She broke in the opening game, helped by a forehand return winner on a second serve, followed by Paolini’s missed forehand on an 11-stroke exchange.
Donna Vekic could not hold her emotions during and after the longest semi-final women’s match in history at Wimbledon. Nine
Soon Vekic led 3-1. After a later trade of breaks, she was up 4-3.
“I believed I could win,” Vekic said, “until the end.”
Paolini will now face No. 31 Barbora Krejcikova for the title.
The same could be said of the second semi-final, which lasted 44 fewer minutes but contained its own share of plot twists as 2021 French Open champion Krejcikova came back to eliminate 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.
Whoever wins on Saturday will be the eighth woman to leave the All England Club with the title in the past eight editions of the tournament.
Krejcikova trailed 4-0 at the start, reeled off four of five games to take the second set, then earned the pivotal break to move ahead 5-3 in the third against Rybakina, who entered the day with a 19-2 career mark at the All England Club.
“During the second set, somewhere in the middle, I was getting my momentum,” Krejcikova said. “And when I broke her, I started to be in a zone — and I didn’t want to leave the zone.”