“I’ll have a bagel please, no smoked salmon just six games to love – hold the lemon’
By Paul Lagan at Wimbledon
Centre Court
Jabeur v Kvitova 6-0, 6,3
Bagels are best served with smoke salmon and a touch of cayenne pepper and lemon.
Tennis players do not like losing a set to zero. Petra Kvitova suffered the worse kind of bagel – a 6-0 drubbing in the first set.
She revived only slightly in the second set but was duly dumped out of the Championships by a highly motivated former finalist Ons Jabeur.
As first sets go, Jabeur has probably not played as well against a seeded player before at Wimbledon.
But Petra Kvitova is a double Wimbledon singles champion, it beggared belief that she hammered her opponent in the opening set.
Taking a 5-0 lead it was a major surprise when she dropped a point, the fact it went to deuce equally perplexing, but after just 22 minutes of play and a double fault to boot, she was presented with another set point and this time she made no mistake hitting a deep serve which Kvitova returned long.
The Czech Republic player took herself off court for much-needed respite from the grass and returned to open the second set with a face-saving wining game.
Jabeur responded with a service hold while Kvitova attempted to gain a foothold in the match.
But she couldn’t and a double fault, on break point saw the Tunisian take a 2-1 lead. This swiftly became 3-1, which then became 4-1 as Kvitova was comprehensively dismantled by Jabeur’s array of ground-strokes which Kvitova simply could not anticipate.
A lull in the proceedings occurred in the sixth game when Jabeur, 4-1 up basically self-imploded – a needless double-fault and a lack of concentration saw Kvitova break her for the first time.
And then she held her serve to give Jabeur a 4-3 lead in the second set.
A love service game meant that at 3-5 Kvitova was serving to stay in the Championships.
Jabeur spring around the court memorised Kvitova who went love 40 down and facing three match points – on;y one was needed and the game was over in 63 minutes.