Elle aura eu besoin de 43 tournois du Grand Chelem pour connaitre ce sentiment. Mardi, à Wimbledon, Donna Vekic s'est qualifiée pour sa toute première demi-finale en Grand Chelem, à l'âge de 28 ans. Opposée à la surprise Lulu Sun en quarts, la Croate a fait le dos rond pendant une manche et demie avant de finalement faire exploser son adversaire pour l'emporter après 2h09 sur le score de 5-7, 6-4, 6-1. La 37e mondiale confirme sa bonne forme et surtout ses très bonnes aptitudes sur gazon. Elle affrontera Jasmine Paolini pour une place en finale.
Vidéo : @Wimbledon
Vidéo : @Wimbledon
Category
🥇
SportTranscription
00:00Donna, semi-finals, how are you feeling?
00:06Pretty good. Really happy. Yeah, that's it.
00:10Hi Donna, Fizan here from Quartershot. How special was it to have your brother in the
00:15box and also your nearest and dearest as well? And how much of a boost was that today?
00:20Yeah, it's always special to have my family there with me watching. He flew in this morning,
00:26I didn't even see him yet, but my brother and my cousins were watching me for the first
00:33time. So it's really great to have all my friends here as well. So it's a really nice
00:41atmosphere at home.
00:42Donna, congratulations. A wonderful performance today. At the end you looked a little out
00:49of breath and maybe a little unwell. Was everything okay? How were you feeling?
00:56I don't even remember, but it was a tough match. The first two sets were incredibly
01:04high level. I think she was playing really well. I was struggling a little bit because
01:11I couldn't find a way to get through her. But in the third set I think I raised my level
01:19even more and managed to close it out.
01:22What's the humidity level like in there at the moment? The temperature?
01:27It's humid. It's been raining for ten days straight more or less, but it doesn't really
01:36matter. I was so happy to have finished the match from start to finish.
01:40Simon Cambers from The Guardian. You wear your heart on your sleeve when you're out
01:46there. You can see all the emotions, the stresses as you're going through that kind of match.
01:52How much did you want this today to get to that semi-final? How stressful was it?
02:00I wanted it a lot, of course. But before the match I was relaxed. The only moment where
02:11I was a bit more stressed out during the match was when I saw how well she's playing. It's
02:17not that I didn't expect her to play well. I knew she was going to come out swinging.
02:22But I could not find the depth in my shots and I wasn't executing my shots as well as
02:33I wanted to. And that's why I was a little bit more stressed and tense. But at the end
02:39I managed to find my game.
02:43I don't know. After what happened in Paris, does it make it extra special to sit there
02:49now and to have picked yourself up after what could have been a season-ending situation?
02:56That was a very tough loss for me in Paris. But honestly, it hurt me so much that I saw
03:05what I needed to change and it pushed me and motivated me even more.
03:12You talked about the injuries you had previously a couple of years ago. How much does it mean
03:20to you to be reaching the semis given what you went through in 2021 and 2022?
03:30Those couple of years were very tough. But I didn't think I was ever going to come back
03:37to the level that I even had last year. So now reaching my best result ever at the SLAM,
03:47I'm really proud of myself, of the work that I've done, of the work that my team has done.
03:53I'm very thankful to them for believing in me when I didn't.
03:59What was the challenge of playing someone today who is relatively unknown,
04:03so not quite sure how skilled she is or what's going to happen out there?
04:14What's always been tricky for me is playing against lefties.
04:19I always struggle a little bit more on the return against a lefty serve.
04:23So that was that. But in a way, it's not like, OK, it's just another match. You don't really
04:33think too much against who you're playing. And I was like, OK, I was just not trying to think
04:39it's quarterfinals, just another round of the tournament, not even trying to forget that it's
04:45Wimbledon. Because if I would think about that, I would probably die on the court.
04:53Congratulations. How were you able to reset so effectively
04:57when you were broken serving for the second set?
05:06I was so angry. I was so angry at myself, because I even to get broken first in the
05:14first set at 5-0, then finally managed to break her in the second set and then
05:20get broken. I don't know where those double faults came from, because
05:24I wasn't particularly nervous. So I was surprised that I was just hitting double faults.
05:31But I was like, no, this is not happening right now. But I managed to,
05:36I could hear Pam shouting, reset, reset. I was like, reset what?
05:43But I was just, you know, just already kind of didn't think I was going to break her again.
05:51I was just trying to think how I'm going to play for my service game at 5-0.
06:00With this new role with the coaching staff that you can actually have a bit of an exchange now,
06:04would you say that you're a player that really has benefited from that in this championship?
06:09Probably not. I told them to shut up five times during the match.
06:17Probably not. But it's also nice when I reach out to them to know that I can reach out in case I
06:25need help. I know that they're always there. And a follow on from that as well, going into
06:30the semifinals, because whoever the opponent is, what do you think the biggest challenge around it
06:37is? Because you've spoken about wanting it, trying to not want it too much.
06:41What do you think that challenge is going to be like?
06:45Well, I don't know yet. I'm just going to, I think, try to keep the same routines,
06:52try to recover the best I can and get ready for the match and try not to think that it's
06:59semifinals. I mean, I'm going to enjoy being on centre court. It's the best court in the world.
07:07I'm really going to try to enjoy my time out there.
07:12For fans who aren't as familiar with your story, how close were you really to walking
07:17away from the sport and how far away does that moment feel from where you are right now?
07:27You know, there was a couple of times in my career that I didn't want to play tennis anymore and
07:37most of you know that it was after my surgeries, but actually there was one recent one. It was
07:42actually the Thursday before Roland-Garros this year that we had scheduled practice and
07:51I arrived to the club and I told Nick, Nick, listen, I want to pull out of French Open.
07:57I want to go home. I want to take a longer break because I didn't have any energy
08:06motivation to keep practicing, keep pushing because I felt like the last couple of months
08:12I've given everything for tennis and I wasn't getting the results that I
08:21kind of expected. So it was a very, very tough moment, but they were all there for me. And
08:29like I said, that loss in Paris was so, so painful, but it motivated me again to keep
08:41working, to keep pushing. And it's crazy how in tennis things can turn so fast. One of my
08:52best friends who's here was with me in Rome. I was talking to her before the match and I was like,
08:59do you remember Rome after the match? And she was like, yeah, and now you're in the quarterfinals
09:06and now I'm in the semifinals. So I think not just in tennis, in life things can turn pretty fast.
09:14So given all that, how would you describe your story from almost giving up a short time ago
09:21until where you are right now?
09:32I mean, I guess to never give up. It's not easy at times, but
09:42yeah, I think you have to, I had to really dig deep inside and push myself. But like I said,
09:50if I didn't have the team of people around me, I don't know how I would find the strength in me.
10:00You mentioned the team. In particular, Pam, you've been together for quite a while now.
10:04What is it about her or your relationship with her that's been so successful? What makes her such a
10:10good person to have in the team? Well, Pam is, first of all, a great person
10:14off the court, and she's had an amazing, amazing career. And she has so much experience,
10:21especially because playing. And then the last couple of years she's been commentating. So she
10:27knows all the players really well. Like I said, she has all the experience, so she can really
10:33help me in some crucial moments. And she's great fun. So I'm really proud to have her in my team.
10:41Personality too, which is great stories, great chat. Exactly. And what I like about her and
10:47everyone in my team, they always say it the way it is. They don't try to sugarcoat things and
10:55they're very direct, which I really appreciate. Any further questions, Charlie?
11:01I just wondered, Donna, you were asked before about the kind of stresses of these matches.
11:05Do you enjoy them? No, not at all. A lot of the times I'm like, I just cannot wait for this match
11:15to be over. Honestly, it's really tough out there, even if it doesn't matter if it's first round,
11:25second round, quarterfinals. It's tough. It's tough to enjoy. And the part that I do enjoy
11:34is playing on big courts with such an amazing crowd. That's the part that I try to soak in
11:40while I'm playing. And I have to always remind myself to enjoy it, because in the moment,
11:47it's tough. You want to win and you want to win as fast as possible and get out of there. But
11:54yeah, playing on court one at Wimbledon, you have to try to enjoy it.
12:01Can we ask about the next opponent? We don't know who it will be.
12:06So if you wouldn't mind speaking individually first about Emma.
12:12Emma has had an amazing last couple of months. She's improved so much. She's a very solid player.
12:22She's a very nice girl as well. I like her a lot. I like her team as well. So if I play her,
12:31it's going to be... I mean, what else can I say other than it's going to be a tough match
12:35in the semifinals? Anything specific about the way she plays that you could point to?
12:41I mean, she plays a very, very clean game. She's very solid. So it's a game that I...
12:52that doesn't... I don't know how to word it. It's... For example, I struggle a lot when someone
13:00plays like a lot of slice, comes to the net. I think she has a pretty clean game.
13:06And then Pauline?
13:07Yeah, she's a great girl. You can always see her smiling. I don't know if anyone's smiling as much
13:13as she does on court. So it's... She's really played amazing this year, winning Dubai finals
13:22in Roland-Garros. So I'm really, really happy for her. She's a really nice girl.
13:26Has she done it?
13:28How?
13:31I don't know. I don't know. She's playing great tennis. She's very...
13:36She's very aggressive. She moves well. So I guess that.