Live from Wimbledon Day 13 - Noskova conquers nerves to win it all

**Catherine** (0:11)
Hello, and welcome to The Tennis Podcast, live from Wimbledon and presented by Barclays, the official banking partner of Wimbledon. We are coming to you tonight, just minutes after the speeches and the ceremony on Centre Court have concluded, following an absolutely wild ride of a women's final here at Wimbledon, wild buildup for us also to this show. Ted being chucked across the desk just moments ago.
But the wild ride of the women's final won by newly anointed Wimbledon champion Linda Noskova. We sometimes hold back a bit from using the word choke on this show, because it's just such a brutal and damning word. But I do feel comfortable declaring today that in the words of the great Mary Carrillo, Linda Noskova choked and won anyway. Which is pretty much the greatest feat in sport or in life, isn't it? To fall over and get back up.

**David** (1:14)
Yeah, I think if you don't, in inverted commas, choke in the Wimbledon final, when you're trying to serve it out, when you've never done it before in your life, when it's the biggest moment that you've ever had in your young life, and it's certainly the biggest tennis moment that you'll ever have, I think it would be more surprising. It really would, and I think it's the most human thing in the world, and the manner in which it happened, somewhat forced by our opponent, but also the vulnerability on display, the emotions and the nerves and the fragility, and then the strength, the strength to accept it, to suffer, to reset, and to go again, and put yourself in the firing line of it all over again. And it could have happened twice on the same day for her, and she banished it in the same day. I think it was a choke, and it was the most glorious of redemptions.

**Catherine** (2:13)
It was a three act play, this tennis match.

**Matt** (2:16)
Yeah, it was a straightforward 6-2, 6-3 win with an aberration in the middle, wasn't it? No wonder we weren't sure what was going to happen in this match, because in the end, everything happened.
Is Muchova going to look spent? Yeah, she absolutely is. Is Noskova going to bully her with that brilliant, secure game that she's got right now? Yeah, she's going to do that. Is Noskova going to get tight in her first Wimbledon Grand Slam final? Yes, that is going to happen as well. Is Muchova going to start to outplay her and look like maybe she can win it? Yes, that will happen too.
And then, you know, that all happened and we're in the third set. And it was the question is, where do we go from here? So for Noskova to ensure that the final set looks so much like the first set after the, well, yeah, choke in the second set when she didn't win a game for about 50 minutes, absolutely extraordinary reset feet from Linda Noskova to win this.

**Catherine** (3:18)
49 and a half minutes without winning a game for Linda Noskova after having five championship points.
I just think that's the comeback of the century, quite frankly, like unbelievable stuff, unbelievable mental resilience. And going into that third set, the least likely scenario seemed to me like just a fairly straightforward run of the mill, six, three set for either of them. And yet, that is what Linda Noskova delivered.

**David** (3:49)
Yeah, having gone off the court with her fingers and her ears, because she couldn't bear to hear the crowd anymore celebrating her opponents, celebrating her own collapse. And it had happened on two successive changeovers when it was just not slipping away, it was collapsing away. It was just the whole thing was coming apart at the seams for her. And this player who had been so rock steady, who'd been so secure, she did when she was closing in on victory, what I worried she might do at the start, which was sort of freeze. Again, I do think it's completely understandable that that would happen when it means that much to you. But to look like you're, I mean, it looked like Janna Novotna, that I remember in 1993, who led the final set against Steffi Graf, 4-1, and had points for 5-1, and then didn't win another game. It looked like that, that that's the sort of mental collapse that was happening, emotional collapse.
And she left the court and I felt so sorry for her. At that point, I'm thinking, OK, well, no matter what, we've got an incredible final. This is a wonderful final and I don't mind who wins. I have, you know, at the start of the match, I emotionally was sort of drawn to Muchova being 29 and having had all these injury problems and Noskova is young and she's going to get other chances. But when somebody goes through that sort of hell on court, honestly, I wanted to cry for her really. And I was sort of just hoping that she didn't just tailspin away. And I think that that would have been a completely understandable thing to have happened in the third set, because Muchova had started really badly in this match and was playing poorly, frankly, and being bossed. And then she found a game and for Noskova to lose her game at the same time as Muchova found hers, and then to still go off the court and find a way to reverse that, I think, is one of the great feats that you'll see all year in tennis.