Markéta Vondroušová

Her grandfather, František Frk, was the Czechoslovak national pentathlon champion in 1935.

Vondroušová is a former world No. 1 junior.

Markéta Šimková (née Vondroušová; ; born 28 June 1999) is a Czech professional tennis player.

She has a career-high singles ranking of world No. 6 by the WTA.

Vondroušová is the reigning Wimbledon champion, winning the tournament in 2023, the first unseeded woman to win the singles title.

Markéta Vondroušová was born on 28 June 1999 to David Vondrouš and Jindřiška Anderlová in Sokolov, a small town in the Karlovy Vary Region of the Czech Republic.

Her father introduced her to tennis at the age of four, having played the sport recreationally.

Her mother played volleyball for SK Slavia Prague in the top-flight Extraliga.

Her parents divorced when Vondroušová was three, but they both stayed in her life and supported her growth as a tennis player.

When Vondroušová was young, she tried a variety of sports, including skiing, football, table tennis, and floorball, excelling in them all.

She began to focus on tennis early, entering a national mini-tennis tournament on Štvanice island in Prague in 2006, in which she finished third and qualified for an international tournament in Umag in Croatia, where she lost in the first round but won the consolation bracket as an eight-year-old competing against mostly nine-year-old players.

After the tournament in Štvanice, it was arranged for Vondroušová to go back to train there.

During this time, she trained for five days a week, two of which were in Štvanice, a few hours from her hometown.

She had another international success at age 12, when she won the Nike Junior Tour International Masters in the United States, which was regarded as an unofficial 12-and-under world championship.

At age 15, she moved to Prague to train more regularly there.

Vondroušová has a strong athletic background on her mother's side.

She made her debut on the ITF Junior Circuit at the age of 13 and won both the singles and doubles events at her first tournament, the Grade 5 San Michel International Tournament in Malta in April 2013.

Later in the year, she won a higher-level Grade 4 singles event in Poland as well as a separate Grade 2 doubles event in the Czech Republic.

Vondroušová made her Grade 1 debut with a singles semifinal in January 2014, which she followed with a second round loss in her debut at the highest-level Grade A tournaments in May.

She entered her first junior Grand Slam events in May and had immediate success, reaching the semifinals at both the French Open and Wimbledon.

In both tournaments, she lost to the eventual champions Daria Kasatkina and Jeļena Ostapenko respectively.

Vondroušová fared better in doubles at the French Open, finishing runner-up to the Romanian team of Ioana Ducu and Ioana Loredana Roșca alongside American CiCi Bellis in a match tiebreak.

Despite losing her opening singles matches at her last two Grade A tournaments of the year, the US Open and the Orange Bowl, Vondroušová ended 2014 by winning the Orange Bowl doubles title with Bellis.

Vondroušová continued to have success in doubles in 2015, most notably winning her only two junior Grand Slam titles and three Grade-A doubles events in total.

Although she lost her opening-round match at the Australian Open, she won the doubles title with compatriot Miriam Kolodziejová without dropping a set.

Vondroušová did not play another junior event until late May, instead opting to play events on the professional circuit.

In her return, she won both the singles and doubles events at the Grade-A Trofeo Bonfiglio, again partnering with Kolodziejová.

She defeated Charlotte Robillard-Millette in the singles final for her only career Grade-A singles title.

With these titles, Vondroušová became the No. 1 ranked junior in the world for the first time.

While she lost in the semifinals at the French Open for the second consecutive year, she won a second Grand Slam doubles title with Kolodziejová, again without losing a set.

The semifinal was her best Grand Slam singles result of the year.

Vondroušová and Kolodziejová then won a fourth consecutive title at the Grade-1 Junior International Roehampton before their 28-match win streak came to an end in the Wimbledon semifinals, where they were defeated by the Hungarian team of Dalma Gálfi and Fanny Stollár.

She had a quick breakthrough on the WTA Tour, winning the 2017 Ladies Open Biel Bienne at age 17 in just her second career WTA Tour singles event.

This helped her reach the top 100 of the WTA rankings before turning 18.

She was also the runner-up at the 2019 French Open, where she became the first teenage Major finalist in nearly a decade.

Vondroušová struggled with injuries early in her career, most notably missing the second half of the 2019 season shortly after her French Open final.

Her signature shot is the drop shot.

She is one of the best returners on WTA Tour, having led the tour in percentage of return games won and percentage of return points won in 2019 among all players with at least ten matches.

She has won two singles titles out of six finals on the WTA Tour and a silver medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Vondroušová is a former junior world No. 1, having won two major doubles titles.