Mumbai: It took a little while for Linda Noskova to get back onto her feet. The tears were expected, so was the joy when she climbed into her player’s box to celebrate as the new Wimbledon champion.
Everyone was there, her father, support staff, family – everyone. Except her mother Ivana.
Two years ago, on the eve of the Wimbledon Championships, Ivana lost a long battle to cancer.
At this year’s Championships, Noskova, 21, honoured her mother’s memory with her biggest triumph so far. On Saturday, in her first time Grand Slam final, she beat close friend Karolina Muchova 6-2, 5-7, 6-3 to become the third player from the Czechia to win the women’s singles crown in four years.
But even after the roller coaster that was the match, there was more emotion on display when Noskova was handed the Venus Rosewater Dish.
“I want to thank my dad for coming here,” she said, tearing up. “There’s also one more person I would like to thank. My mom. I would not be standing here without her. So, thank you.”
With a kiss towards the sky, the tears finally made way for smiles, and reflection on the gritty, and hard-fought win she managed to achieve in a match that lasted two hours and 28 minutes.
The match began with Noskova putting her big serve and equally big groundstrokes to devastating effect, as she broke the 29-year-old Muchova’s serve twice to take the first set with relative ease. She looked poised to win the match in quick-time as well, racing to a 5-2 lead in the second set.
That’s when Muchova, for all her experience and craft, started to claw her way back into the game. She saved five match points, won five games in a row and took the match into the decider.
Muchova, the former French Open finalist with a game that mixes aggressive baseline play with volleys and demoralising drop shots, had started to unsettle Noskova.
Early in the third set, Muchova played another delicate dink over the net.
This constant disruption in the rhythm that comes with baseline exchanges was getting to Noskova. So far, her big serves were working well, the groundstrokes just as lethal because of the power. But she was unable to tackle Muchova’s drop shots.
The 21-year-old sprang towards the net, got there on time and played a perfectly placed passing shot down the line. It was the first time Noskova had found an answer.
At the other end of the court, Muchova shook her head. The only real weapon she had against Noskova had finally been neutralised as the younger player went on to add her name to the growing list of players from her country to win the Wimbledon crown.
The great Martina Navratilova, a record nine-time winner of the title was watching from the stands, as was two-time winner Petra Kvitova, waiting to welcome a new compatriot to the club in the first-ever all-Czech final at Wimbledon.
And this match came between two players whose careers have been intertwined, both on and off court.
Muchova, in a lighter moment through her own tears, called Noskova her “ex-friend.”
But together they had represented their country in the women’s doubles event at the Paris Olympics, and even led Czechia back into the Finals of the Billie Jean King Cup.
The night, however, belonged to the young Noskova as she became the 10th different women’s singles champion at Wimbledon in the last 10 years.
In her early years, she had started out riding horses, doing gymnastics, and tennis was not really on the horizon. But the 2021 junior French Open champion had it in her to make it big. And she did so in the most fabled of tennis courts. And after a dramatic comeback.
