Ons Jabeur’s nerves left her too drained to play well in the Wimbledon final

WATCH: Ons Jabeur Cried "Together" With Kim Clijsters After Falling To 0-3 In Major Finals

“When you walk onto that court, it’s like you’re jumping into a bottomless pit,” John Newcombe once told my colleague Peter Bodo.

Newk was talking about Centre Court at Wimbledon, of course, and his words came back to me while I was watching Ons Jabeur try, but ultimately fail, to dig herself out of what looked like a bottomless pit of nerves in her final against Marketa Vondrousova.

There’s nothing quite like the tension in that arena as a singles final is set to begin. Even halfway up the stadium, you feel like you’re walking into a brick wall of pressure when you go in. In the first final I saw there, in 2002, David Nalbandian froze up; in the most recent that I attended, in 2017, Marin Cilic cried during a changeover. As Jabeur walked into Centre Court today, she said she could feel the weight of the task ahead.

“Honestly, I felt a lot of pressure, feeling a lot of stress,” she said. “But like every final, like every match I played, I was telling myself it’s OK, it’s normal. I honestly did nothing wrong. I did everything that I could.”

In each set, the effort to overcome that stress left Jabeur too drained to play anything like her best tennis. She went up 4-2 in the first set, then lost 16 of the next 18 points in a flurry of errors. After gathering herself off court between sets, she had a burst of energy at the start of the second, and after recouping a service break, served for a 4-1 lead. But again, the mistakes, particularly from the backhand side, started to flow. Between games, Jabeur bent over and breathed hard; she walked slowly between points; she leaned against a wall at the back of the court. She seemed to lose energy with each passing game.

“I tried to tell myself that nothing is over,” Jabeur said. “It’s going to get better maybe. I been used to losing the first set in these last two matches, so I hoped maybe it would be better in the next few games.”

“But obviously not.”

Besides admitting to being tight, Jabeur also said that after playing and beating two big hitters, Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka, it was hard to adjust to Vondrousova’s more varied and finesse-based style.

“Marketa just put the ball in, slices a lot. I believe that it was a completely different match from the last three that I had. So maybe adapting to her rhythm was very difficult for me,” Jabeur said.

Jabeur also said that Vondrousova played “the perfect match for her.” And there’s no question that she was the calmer competitor and more accurate ball striker. She only hit 10 winners, but she also committed just 13 errors, compared to Jabeur’s 31. Vondrousova made her returns, mixed her serve up, used her drop shot, and forced Jabeur to move without taking big risks. There’s no shame in letting an off-form opponent self-destruct.

And it’s not as if Vondrousova didn’t have her own Centre Court anxieties to fight off.

“It was very tough match, and I was so nervous before,” she said. “I’m just so grateful and proud of myself.”

“When I was 40-love up [in the final game], I almost couldn’t breathe. It’s just like everything is on you. I’m just very happy that I stayed in my head and I just kept it together.”

Vondrousova becomes the first unseeded woman in the 100-year history of Wimbledon seedings to win the title. A year ago, the 24-year-old was in a cast and wasn’t sure what her tennis future held. When the tournament began, she wasn’t a favorite or even many people’s dark horse. But she has a smooth, complete game, and she doesn’t try to do too much with it. More than anything else, she “stayed in her head,” as she said, better than anyone else.

She came back from 1-4 down in the third set to beat Jessica Pegula in the quarterfinals, stopped Elina Svitolina’s inspired run in the semis, and handled the moment better than the favored Jabeur in the final. Only now, as the champion, is she on most sports fans’ radar.

That favorite status probably didn’t help Jabeur. You might think that playing in the final last year would have aided her this time, but the opposite seems to be true. The prospect of losing again, one match from the Wimbledon title, only made her tighter. Jabeur also plays for more than just herself. She plays for Africa, for the Arab world, for Arab women and kids. She does it with maximum grace, but it must be a lot to shoulder on days like these.

If the match itself wasn’t one to remember, the trophy ceremony was. Vondrousova said her coach has to get a tattoo now, and her cat at home has a cat sitter, so her husband could be here. Jabeur bravely spoke through tears, to a long standing ovation, about how this was the most “painful” loss of her career.

“It’s painful because you feel so close to achieving something that you want, and actually back to square one,” she said later.

But she also said that she took heart from a locker-room crying session that she had with Kim Clijsters, who lost her first four Slam finals before winning four.

“I think things take time with me,” Jabeur said. “Hopefully I will be like the others that failed couple of times to do it and it will come after.

“We'll keep doing what I’m doing. We'll keep learning, for sure, because I think that’s the key for me.”

If the ovations today in that bottomless pit, Centre Court, are any indication, fans everywhere—in Africa, the Arab nations, and all over the world—will be pulling for her.