With every win, Jabeur putting Wimbledon heartbreak aside

Wimbledon, with all of its floral madness, pomp and circumstance, is Ons Jabeur

View Profile ’s favorite tournament.

She’s won more matches there than any other Grand Slam. The 19^th came Thursday, a routine 6-1, 7-5 second-round victory over American qualifier Robin Montgomery

View Profile . But that robust number falls far short of describing the charged, cathartic journeys of the past two years, when she reached back-to-back finals.

A year ago, when she was favored to win her first major, Jabeur fell to Marketa Vondrousova

View Profile in straight sets. She sobbed at the trophy ceremony and later, in a hallway beneath Center Court, received a hug from Catherine, Princess of Wales. It was a painful reprise of their moment together following Jabeur’s loss to Elena Rybakina

View Profile in the 2022 final.

Jabeur called it “the most painful loss” of her career and it haunted her through the 2023 season. She’s been open about that disappointment -- and her three losses in Grand Slam finals, including the 2022 US Open -- and the subject came up again at Roland Garros.

“I feel much better than at the end of last year,” Jabeur told reporters. “Mentally it was hard. Consciously we never realize, but I feel better. It’s part of the past now. We learn from the past.

“If I keep overthinking about it, it wouldn’t be good for me. I know that it’s part of the past, it’s part of the game, and I'm starting anew, and I hope that I will make my dream come true one day.”

After a slow start, exacerbated by a cranky knee, the No.10-ranked Jabeur has been playing better of late. She reached the quarterfinals in Madrid and Paris and has now won six of eight matches on grass.

One of those losses was a retirement against the World No.2 Coco Gauff

View Profile after losing a first-set tiebreaker in Berlin. Jabeur was battling an illness but has flourished in two matches at Wimbledon. She defeated Japan’s Moyuka Uchijima

View Profile 6-3, 6-1 in the first round and, after an uncertain start against Montgomery, put the hammer down.

Jabeur took a 2-0 lead but was broken in the third game. With Montgomery serving to level the match, Jabeur won the pivotal 15-point fourth game, finally cashing her fourth break point. The critical game of the second set was the 11^th, when Jabeur scored another break and served out the match.

In their first-ever meeting, Jabeur held a significant advantage in winners versus forced errors -- plus-four, compared to minus-12 for the loser.

Montgomery, a promising 19-year-old from the United States, was looking for only her second Grand Slam main-draw victory. The No.161-ranked player came in with 44 aces in her four matches here, but was out-hit 5-4 by Jabeur.

More from Wimbledon:

• Watch this: Gauff wins a wild point on Day 3
  
• Is grass-court tennis the trickest surface on the tour?
  
• Familiar faces: Barty, Sharapova return to Wimbledon with their sons
• Raducanu teaming with Murray in mixed doubles
• Get to know Sonay Kartal, the British qualifier set to face Gauff next

On Saturday, Jabeur plays No.21-seeded Elina Svitolina

View Profile , a 6-3, 6-4 winner over Jule Niemeier

View Profile . The 29-year-old from Ukraine won the first three encounters with Jabeur, between 2012-19, but Jabeur took the only match in the past five years, a 2021 quarterfinal in Chicago.

When the questions about those back-to-back Wimbledon finals come up, Jabeur objectively lists the recent improvements in her game: Forehand, serve, approach to a Grand Slam. On grass, Jabeur said, her diverse game can give her almost too many possibilities.

“Obviously when you have a lot of options of hitting the ball, doing the dropshot or slicing, it’s a bit difficult,” she said. “Yeah, sometimes with the grass I think what helps is it’s not a slow surface, and it's very, very fast. Sometimes the slices can really be annoying for most of the players.

“I think changing the rhythm, slicing, higher-speed ball could really bother any player, to be honest with you. That’s really an advantage for me. The fact that I know my ball could go faster really helps me also mentally during the match.”

On some level, though, she’s still dealing with the loss and frustration.

“I’m sure I learned one or two things from playing these finals,” Jabeur said earlier this year. “If I play the fourth one, I will definitely try to do much better than I did before. I have some ideas because sometimes I sleep at night, and I only think about what I should have done differently.

“I’m rebuilding definitely, but also not everything that I learn or I have in me is completely gone. It’s still there, but it’s still, like, helping me be the player that I am today, be the player that can pull off some matches like this.”