Arab women can do it too: Jabeur

Jabeur, 26, is the first Tunisian woman to reach the last eight at Wimbledon and will face Belarusian second seed Aryna Sabalenka, who defeated Elena Rybakina 6-3, 4-6, 6-3. Sabalenka will be playing in her first Grand Slam quarter-final.

Arab women can do it too: Jabeur

Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur after beating Iga Swiatek to enter the quarters yesterday. Pic/AFP

Ons Jabeur’s historic Wimbledon campaign saw her reach the women’s quarter-finals on Monday, beating Poland’s 2020 French Open champion Iga Swiatek 5-7, 6-1, 6-1 in their fourth-round match.

Fans sing football song

Jabeur celebrated victory with a fist pump and a yell of delight but she was not a lone Tunisian voice as some spectators burst into song. “Tunisians are everywhere, I got to say,” she said. “They were actually singing a football song. I felt the need to sing with them also. I felt so happy that I wanted, like, to hear more. I was doing like this [cupping a hand to one ear]to hear them,” added Jabeur, whose exploits in the past few weeks have given huge momentum to her mission to encourage more Arab women, especially North African, to take up the sport. And with her maiden WTA title under her belt (Birmingham Classic earlier this year)—the first Arab woman to achieve that—and now her run to the quarter-finals at Wimbledon she could not have done more to push her goal.

“It is very important to me. I have seen it, heard it, a lot of times coming here on tour from where I come, I need to gain my respect either with the players or anyone around here. I just want to give the example for many generations coming from North Africa, from my country, from the African continent, that it’s not impossible, that we can do it. I’m trying to carry this message for a very long time. Hopefully, it’s working,” said Jabeur, who showed great poise to stay in the match after she let slip a 5-4 lead and serving for the first set only for the Pole to reel off three games on the bounce.

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Solid fightback

Jabeur however, did not look back once she had got over the loss of the first set. She broke her opponent in the first game of the second set to set the tone for the rest of the tie. Such was her dominance that Swiatek at one point having been out-witted by a Jabeur drop shot smashed the top of the net angrily with her racquet.

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