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While it was Marion Bartoli who claimed the Wimbledon title overnight with her straight-sets win over Sabine Lisicki, both players have had to endure rocky paths to get to where they are now.
Bartoli defeated Lisicki 6-1, 6-4 overnight to win her first Grand Slam title, and at the age of 28 and at her 45th Grand Slam appearance dating back to 2001.
She joins the likes of Jana Novotna and Francesca Schiavone who won their first Grand Slam titles at late stages in their careers.
Prior to this year’s Wimbledon Championships, Bartoli had endured a poor season – she had yet to even reach a single semi-final this year, lost in the third rounds of the Australian and French Opens (to Ekaterina Makarova and Schiavone respectively) and dropped out of the Top 10 after early departures from Indian Wells and Miami.
More to the point, she had not reached a final since losing to Dominika Cibulkova in Carlsbad last year, and hadn’t won a title since 2011.
But all that changed overnight with her maiden Grand Slam title and with it she is guaranteed to return to the world’s Top 10 this week.
Bartoli’s straight sets victory also sees her become the first woman since Serena Williams won Wimbledon in 2010 to win a Grand Slam title without dropping a set, and the first since Maria Sharapova won the 2008 Australian Open to win without having to play a tiebreak set.
It was a dominant way to win a first Grand Slam title, and at the age of 28, more great things are bound to happen for Bartoli, whose early part of her career was stuck in the shadow of Amelie Mauresmo, who was the last woman to win a Grand Slam title until now.
Sabine Lisicki was far from disgraced in losing in her first Grand Slam final appearance, but as the match wore on it became obvious that the occasion and her nerves was starting to get the better of her.
Lisicki came into the final having claimed four big scalps – former Grand Slam champions Francesca Schiavone, Samantha Stosur and Serena Williams in the early rounds, and then Agnieszka Radwanska, last year’s finalist, in the semi-finals.
But the game that she produced in defeating those four opponents severely deserted her as she struggled to contain the strong backhand game of Marion Bartoli, which had been a prominent feature at these championships.
But to her credit, Lisicki managed to same some of her best until last.
She saved three championship points on her serve at 1-5 down in the second set, and then broke Bartoli at 2-5 down as she was serving for the title.
That saved her from what would have been the most one-sided Grand Slam final since the 2005 French Open, when Justine Henin-Hardenne thrashed Mary Pierce for the loss of just two games.
But in the end, 6-1, 6-4 is not a bad scoreline and Lisicki will learn from the experience.
The trip to the final may not have had its fairytale ending, but it is a culmination of how far she’s had to come in the last few years.
A serious ankle injury she suffered at Indian Wells in 2010 left her “needing to learn how to walk again” and kept her out of the sport she loved for six months.
Having peaked at a then-career high of World No. 23 at the time, her ranking then suffered and by March 2011 she was down to No. 218.
But then Lisicki would make an improbable run to the semi-finals at Wimbledon that year, taking out recently-crowned French Open champion Li Na and her conqueror, Marion Bartoli, in the quarter-finals before losing to Maria Sharapova.
Lisicki’s run was similar to that of Zheng Jie’s from 2008, whereby she reached the semi-finals as a wildcard entry, knocking out that year’s recently-crowned French Open champion, Ana Ivanovic, in the third round.
That year, injuries also saw her ranking suffer and, like Lisicki after her, Zheng’s ranking dropped to outside the Top 200.
Both Zheng and Lisicki were recognised as the ‘Comeback Player of the Year’ in those respective years.
Then, towards the end of last year Lisicki would suffer another serious injury, one which would see her drop out of the Top 40 earlier this year.
But a rein of good form would see her seeded just in time for this year’s Wimbledon Championships, the tournament which has seen her make a big name for herself.
Lisicki has a habit of beating reigning French Open champions at the All England Club and this year it continued by virtue of her victory over Serena Williams in the fourth round.
She has also previously taken down Svetlana Kuznetsova (2009), Li Na (2011) and Maria Sharapova (2012), while in the first round this year she defeated Francesca Schiavone, the 2010 champion.
That year, Lisicki missed Wimbledon due to the aforementioned ankle injury.
While she may not have had the fairytale ending that she would have hoped for, there is no doubt Lisicki will be back in the Wimbledon final in a later year.
She now needs to build on this effort and continue to believe in herself.
A warning to next year’s French Open champion, whoever it may be: try to avoid drawing Sabine Lisicki before the quarter-finals!
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