Ottawa’s Gabriela Dabrowski and Brazil’s Luisa Stefani advanced to the women’s doubles final at Wimbledon with a 7-5, 6-3 win over Japan’s Shuko Aoyama and Taiwan’s En-shuo Liang on Friday.
Dabrowski and Stefani, the second seeds, have yet to lose a set at the grass-court Grand Slam in London.
Aoyama and Liang, seeded 13th at the All England Club, were an even match for Dabrowski and Stefani to start the contest until failing to defend the only break point of the first set in the final game.
Dabrowski and Stefani, who didn’t face break point, earned another crucial break to go up 5-3 in the second set, then forced their opponents into an error to convert their first match point.
Dabrowski and Stefani have three tournament wins this season, but lost to top-ranked Katerina Siniakova and Taylor Townsend in the French Open semifinals and fell to Anna Danilina and Aleksandra Krunic in the final four at the Australian Open.
They will face 10th seeds Hanyu Guo of China and Kristina Mladenovic of France.
Stefani and Dabrowski will avoid another meeting with French Open champions Katerina Siniakova of Czechia and Taylor Townsend of the United States at the tournament after the top seeds were upset by Guo and Mladenovic in the quarterfinals.
Siniakova and Townsend have defeated Dabrowski and Stefani twice this season, including in the semifinals at Roland Garros.
It will be the third Wimbledon women’s doubles final for Dabrowski, who was runner-up in 2019 with Xu Yifan and again in 2024 alongside Erin Routliffe.
Sinner exacts revenge, Zverev overpowering
If there were any lingering questions over Jannik Sinner’s physical status after his meltdown at the French Open, they should be answered now.
Sinner blasted his way past seven-time champion Novak Djokovic 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 on Friday to reach the Wimbledon final — showing off the kind of dominance he displayed before that second-round defeat in Paris.
“I knew mentally,” Sinner said, “that today I had to raise my level, which I’ve done.”
It was a measure of revenge for Sinner after Djokovic won their last meeting in five sets in this year’s Australian Open semifinals.
Aiming to defend his title at the grass-court Grand Slam, the top-ranked Sinner will face second-seeded Alexander Zverev in Sunday’s final. Sinner has won his last nine meetings with Zverev and 14 straight sets.
“I have to trust myself and I have to believe that I can win and that’s what I’m going to do,” Zverev said before he knew who his opponent would be.
For the 39-year-old Djokovic, it marked another chance missed at adding to his record total of 24 Grand Slam singles titles.
Djokovic a ‘top-five player’ when healthy
But Djokovic expressed interest in playing Wimbledon when he’s 40: “I would like to, at least one more time,” he said.
“I feel when I’m healthy, I’m still able to play as a top-five player, still able to compete at the highest level,” Djokovic added.
Zverev ended the “Ferytale” run of British wild card Arthur Fery with an overpowering 7-6 (0), 6-2, 6-4 victory earlier on Centre Court.
Zverev will be playing for another major trophy a month after winning his first Grand Slam title at Roland Garros.
“This Grand Slam has always been the one that I struggled with the most and all of a sudden I’m in the final of Wimbledon,” the 29-year-old German said. “We got one more match to go on Sunday and that’s what the focus is on.”
Zverev, whose breakthrough at Roland Garros came in his fourth Grand Slam final, is attempting to become the first man in the professional era (since 1968) to win his second title at the next event immediately their first major trophy.
The 114th-ranked Fery, who grew up five minutes from the All England Club and played at Stanford University, was attempting to become the first wild card to reach the final since Goran Ivanisevic won Wimbledon in 2001.
Another hot day on the court
“I think this was just the beginning of his career and I really think that he’s going to do amazing things in this sport,” Zverev said of Fery.
It was another warm day in southwest London, with the temperature rising to about 29 C. It was also breezy and a bit cloudier than in recent days.
Zverev did well not to let the pro-Fery crowd get behind the local player too much and a double fault from Fery early in the first-set tiebreaker put Zverev in control.
The six-foot-six Zverev was also able to dominate with his serve, which he cranked up to 224 kilometres per hour.
When it was over, Fery walked off to a standing ovation and applauded the crowd in return.
“I know that 99.99 per cent of the stadium was wanting Arthur to win. But it was still such an incredible atmosphere. It was such a fair crowd as well,” Zverev said. “A lot of crowds in the world can take an example of this crowd. It’s one of the best crowds to play tennis in front of.”
Zverev had previously never been past the fourth round at Wimbledon.
Now he’s the first German man to reach the final of the grass-court Grand Slam since Boris Becker lost to Pete Sampras in 1995.
The last German man to win Wimbledon was Michael Stich, who beat Becker in the 1991 final.
The scheduled 11 a.m. ET women’s final on Saturday features two Czech players, Karolina Muchova against Linda Noskova.
