Ons Jabeur fires clay swing warning in Charleston

James Richardson
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An ecstatic Ons Jabeur

Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur captured the first title of her 2023 season when she defeated defending champion Belinda Bencic 7-6(6), 6-4 to win the Charleston Open on Sunday.

Bencic had resumed her semi-final against Jessica Pegula earlier in the afternoon, rallying from 4-2 down in the second set tiebreaker to quickly take the match.

Fortunately for Bencic her exertions in the first match amounted to little more than a warm-up but didn’t seem to give her any edge against Jabeur.

Jabeur has now won 37 matches on clay since the start of the 2020 season, the most of any woman on tour, moving ahead of the 36 victories claimed by Iga Swiatek in that time.

Bencic had beaten Jabeur for the title in Charleston 12 months ago, winning 6-1, 5-7, 6-4, but this time around she was unable to make an early break pay off.

Despite taking a 5-3 lead, Bencic had no answer to the guile an courtcraft of Jabeur.

Jabeur brought the crowd to their feet with an incredible tweener under pressure in the dying embers of the first set.

“I reacted very fast,” Jabeur said. “I saw the ball coming at me, so I was like, ‘OK, I’m just going to give her one more ball to play, and see.’ I’m surprised that she didn’t anticipate on the cross, because that’s where I usually play my shots.

“But I think I was lucky and creative with that shot, which was amazing, and it changed up the game a bit for the first set, for sure.”

https://twitter.com/WTA/status/1645141119548915713

Bencic struggled to live with the creativity of Jabeur but would give her all the credit after the match.

“Ons, how you played today was incredible,” Bencic said during the trophy ceremony.

“I figured at the end of the tiebreak, the way you played, maybe it was meant to be for you this year. You deserve it. I’m very glad you’re back, tennis is amazing with you. It’s a pain playing against you, but for tennis you are great.”

For Jabeur the win knocked something off her to-do list.

“I’ve been wanting to win this tournament for a long time,” Jabeur said. “People have been amazing to me. So it’s nice to have a great memory here in Charleston and this is a pretty good start to the clay season.

“I’m very excited to go to Paris and celebrate with my family and with my little nephew, who was just born three weeks ago. This is his gift. He doesn’t know it, but it’s his gift.”