Arab women can do it too: Jabeur

Ons Jabeurrsquos historic Wimbledon campaign saw her reach the womenrsquos quarterfinals on Monday beating Polandrsquos 2020 French Open champion Iga Swiatek 57 61 61 in their fourthround matchJabeur 26 is the first Tunisian woman to reach the last eight at Wimbledon and will face Belarusian second seed Aryna Sabalenka who defeated Elena Rybakina 63 46 63 Sabalenka will be playing in her first Grand Slam quarterfinalFans sing football songJabeur celebrated victory with a fist pump and a yell of delight but she was not a lone Tunisian voice as some spectators burst into song ldquoTunisians are everywhere I got to sayrdquo she said ldquoThey were actually singing a football song I felt the need to sing with them also I felt so happy that I wanted like to hear more I was doing like this cupping a hand to one earto hear themrdquo added Jabeur whose exploits in the past few weeks have given huge momentum to her mission to encourage more Arab women especially North African to take up the sport And with her maiden WTA title under her belt Birmingham Classic earlier this yearmdashthe first Arab woman to achieve thatmdashand now her run to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon she could not have done more to push her goalldquoIt is very important to me I have seen it heard it a lot of times coming here on tour from where I come I need to gain my respect either with the players or anyone around here I just want to give the example for many generations coming from North Africa from my country from the African continent that itrsquos not impossible that we can do it Irsquom trying to carry this message for a very long time Hopefully itrsquos workingrdquo said Jabeur who showed great poise to stay in the match after she let slip a 54 lead and serving for the first set only for the Pole to reel off three games on the bounceAlso ReadDignified Kiwis led by Kane give cricket a good nameSolid fightbackJabeur however did not look back once she had got over the loss of the first set She broke her opponent in the first game of the second set to set the tone for the rest of the tie Such was her dominance that Swiatek at one point having been outwitted by a Jabeur drop shot smashed the top of the net angrily with her racquetThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever