Jabeur tops Kvitova at Wimbledon; sets rematch with Rybakina

In a Centre Court encounter between Top 10 players, No.6 seed Ons Jabeur of Tunisia cruised past No.9 seed Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic 6-0, 6-3 in the Round of 16 at Wimbledon.

Jabeur, who reached her first Grand Slam final last year at Wimbledon, needed just 63 minutes to defeat Kvitova for only the second time in their six career meetings. Jabeur moves into the Wimbledon quarterfinals for the third straight year.

Wimbledon: Scores | Draws | Order of play

Wimbledon final rematch confirmed: Jabeur will now aim for a measure of revenge in the quarterfinals, where she will take on No.3 seed Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan.

Rybakina defeated Jabeur in last year’s Wimbledon final after Jabeur had won the opening set. They have split their four career meetings overall.

Read more: Rybakina makes Wimbledon quarterfinals after Haddad Maia retires

Setting records at SW19: Jabeur has posted history-making runs at Wimbledon in each of the last two seasons. In 2021, she became the first Arab player to reach a Wimbledon quarterfinal.

She went even deeper on the lawns of London last year, where she became the first Arab player to reach a final at any of the Grand Slam events, before being stopped by Rybakina.

Jabeur, who also reached last year’s US Open final, kept her goal to be the first Arab Grand Slam champion alive by stopping the eight-match grass-court winning streak of last week’s Berlin champion Kvitova.

Kvitova, a two-time Wimbledon champion in 2011 and 2014, has still not reached the Wimbledon quarterfinals since she won her second title nine years ago.

Match breakdown: It was a dominant display by Jabeur on Monday, who hit 17 winners, won 82 percent of her first-service points, and converted six of her seven break points. Jabeur allowed big-hitting Kvitova only two holds out of the Czech's eight service games.

Kvitova had said that her serve "didn't work that much" during her tricky third-round win, and her service stats were again below par against Jabeur, where she won only 46 percent of points behind her usually fearsome first-serve. Moreover, Kvitova had 26 unforced errors and just four winners in the match.

Easily chasing down drop shots and carving shots into the corners, a pristine Jabeur won the first set in only 22 minutes and rolled to a 4-1 lead in the second set as well.

In the following game, Kvitova got her first break of the day, and she edged closer to the Tunisian, pulling to 4-3. But Jabeur quickly regrouped with deft backhands, holding at love to put herself a game away from victory.

At 5-3, Jabeur hit a forehand winner into the corner off of a drop shot to reach 0-40 on Kvitova's serve and triple match point. Jabeur only needed one chance, wrapping up the win by forcing a wide error with a rally forehand.

More to come...