JASMINE PAOLINI overcame a tearful Donna Vekic to book a place in her first ever Wimbledon final.
The Italian, 28, beat Vekic 2-6 6-4 7-6 in the match of the tournament on Centre Court.
Paolini and Vekic battled for two hours and 51 minutes, making their contest the longest women’s semi-final in Wimbledon history.
With the pair splitting the first two sets, the decider reached a gruelling crescendo.
Vekic took a 3-1 lead, before three consecutive breaks levelled the contest at 4-4.
With Paolini serving at 5-5, Vekic had two break points that could have seen her serve for the match.
But her opponent eventually held, making her first correct challenge of the match on a Vekic forehand that had initially been ruled a clean winner.
When Hawk-Eye revealed that the Croatian had missed by a whisker, Paolini celebrated as she went to the changeover leading 6-5.
Vekic, meanwhile, was left devastated by the call.
She grimaced as she trudged to her chair, before fully sobbing.
BEST FREE BET SIGN UP OFFERS FOR UK BOOKMAKERS
To her immense credit, she stayed composed to hold serve in the next game to take the match to a deciding tiebreak.
In a finale to the match that was as brutal as it was gripping, Vekic led 8-7 – standing just two points from a place in the final – before dropping the next three to lose.
WE'VE got Wimbledon covered - with our top team at the home of tennis.
Read all the latest news and gossip from SW19 in our BRILLIANT LIVE BLOG.
After the match,a joyous Paolini told the BBC‘s Rishi Persad: “These last months have been crazy for me.
“I am trying to focus on what I have to do on court and I love playing tennis. It is amazing to be here and It is a dream.
“I was watching finals when I was a kid and I am living in the present. The last months have been crazy for me.”
After being informed that she’d just won the longest Wimbledon women’s semi-final in history, recent Roland Garros runner-up Paolini beamed: “It is normal to be tired!
“I hope you enjoyed the match, it was a tense match and I tried to play my best. It is time to recover!”
Paolini will return to Centre Court on Saturday to face either 2022 champion Elena Rybakina or former Roland Garros winner Barbora Krejcikova.
Reacting to Paolini’s challenge at 5-4 in the third set, one fan wrote on social media: “That challenge was INSANE DRAMA.”
While a second gushed: “So proud of Donna girl played amazing was so unlucky with some challenges but we move.”
After her quarter-final victory over Emma Raducanu’s conqueror Lulu Sun, injury-plagued Vekic revealed how close she came to quitting to sport altogether.
She said: “There was a couple of times in my career that I didn’t want to play tennis any more. Most of you know that it was after my surgeries, but actually there was one recent one.
“It was the Thursday before Roland Garros this year that we had scheduled practice. I arrived to the club. I told Nick, ‘Listen, I want to pull out of French Open. I want to go home. I want to take a longer break.’
“I didn’t have any energy, any motivation to keep practising, keep pushing because I felt like the last couple months I’ve given everything for tennis, and I wasn’t getting the results that I kind of expected.
“It was a very, very tough moment, but they were all there for me. Like I said, that loss in Paris was so, so painful. But it motivated me again to keep working, to keep pushing.”
PRIZE MONEY for the 2024 Wimbledon Championships is a new record – and puts the grass-court Slam at the top of the tree.
The All England Club will dish out £50million across all the events – an increase of £5.3m and 11.9 per cent on last year, where singles champions Carlos Alcaraz and Marketa Vondrousova picked up £2.35m each.
However, the king and queen of grass this July will collect an extra £350,000 – taking the winner’s earnings to £2.7m.
Here is the breakdown for the 2024 Wimbledon singles prize money:
