Barbora Krejcikova battles past Elena Rybakina to reach first Wimbledon final of career

Barbora Krejcikova has battled past Elena Rybakina, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, to reach the final of Wimbledon for the first time in her career.

It’s the second Grand Slam final of the Czech's career, her first coming at Roland Garros in 2021—where she won the title.

And that’s not all she achieved with Thursday's victory.

First of all, she’s now 2-0 in her career in Grand Slam semifinals. In her only previous major semifinal, she fought off a match point to defeat Maria Sakkari at Roland Garros three years ago—she then went on to defeat Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova for the title.

Second of all, she’s now 3-0 in her career against Rybakina. She came back from a set down to beat the Kazakh in their only two previous meetings, in Melbourne in 2021 and Ostrava in 2022. She’s actually just the third player to win her first three meetings against her, alongside Aryna Sabalenka and Liudmila Samsonova.

And finally, her 13-major gap between her first two major finals is the longest gap between first two major title matches for a woman since Karolina Pliskova. Her fellow Czech had 18 majors between her first two major finals at the 2016 US Open and 2021 Wimbledon.

Things looked dire for Krejcikova early on as Rybakina raced out to a 4-0, double-break lead, but the 2021 Roland Garros champion started willing her way into the match from there, winning three of the next four games—including two breaks of the Rybakina serve—to close in to 5-3 before the Kazakh closed out the opening frame.

But from there Krejcikova was fully dialed in, and after five straight holds to start the second set she broke for 4-2 en route to evening the match at a set apiece, then broke again for 4-3 in the third en route to pulling off the stunning victory over the No. 4 seed.

The former world No. 2 was never broken after the first set—she didn’t even face a single break point in the third set.

She was asked after when she thought she could turn it around.

“I mean, since the very beginning,” she said. “I mean, since I think, like, at the beginning, she was just playing really well. She was just smashing the ball. Like, she was just putting a lot of winners. But I felt that if I’m going to just stay in the game and if I will keep fighting and try to just stay there with her, that I’m going to get my chances.”

Awaiting the No. 31-seeded Krejcikova in the final on Saturday will be No. 7 seed Jasmine Paolini, a 2-6, 6-4, 7-6 (8) winner over unseeded Donna Vekic in the first semifinal match of the day.

The two have only met once before, in the first round of qualifying at the 2018 Australian Open, with Krejcikova prevailing, 6-2, 6-1.