Wimbledon is proving it’s never too late for a tennis comeback

Aryna Sabalenka came into her Sunday match the winner of 21 straight set tiebreakers at grand slam tournaments. She had also made it to at least the quarterfinals in 14 straight major events, and had not lost in straight sets for an astonishing 121 straight grand slam matches. After she quickly lost the first set of her 4th round match against Naomi Osaka at Wimbledon, all of those records were still intact. 

In the effort to keep those marks going, Sabalenka was screaming at herself, howling like a woman torn between the dueling spirits on each of her shoulders. That’s normal enough for a player long-known as one of the tour’s most demonstrative on the court. But what went beyond the average Sabalenka experience was when she hit herself in the head with her own racquet seven times.

Whatever the four-time champion may have been trying to knock loose in herself, it wasn’t enough. Always the overpowering player, she can be out-skilled or outworked, but never topped in the category of force. Until Sunday, when the resurgent Osaka beat her 6-2, 7-6 (7-2). In her strongest performance since her own four championships between 2018 and 2021, Osaka re-established herself as the most thunderous hitter in the field, dominating the dominator with uncannily booming groundstrokes, serves, and finishes at the net—she sniped, aced, and dunked her world-class opponent into a state of madness.

Should Osaka maintain this level for three more matches, she will likely grab her first Wimbledon championship. Either way, it’s her second quarterfinals appearance in a major in the past calendar year; she made it to the semis in 2025’s U.S. Open, where she lost a similar power-off to Amanda Anisimova. Since retreating from the tour several years ago—first for her own sanity, then to focus on starting a family—Osaka’s comeback has been gradual, but now it’s cresting into what looks like its final form. And when she’s playing at the ceiling of her talent, there’s no one in the post-Serena landscape who can blast her way through the opposition better than Naomi.

Her comeback story isn’t the only great one written on the London grass this summer. One year ago on that green, 34-year-old Grigor Dimitrov was on the verge of a shocking upset against eventual tournament winner Jannik Sinner. Up two sets to none, he was blitzing the world No. 1 with his singular mix of pace and funk. Dimitrov is the type of player who can make the hardest shots in tennis look like playtime—nicknamed “Baby Fed” over a decade ago for creating joy at the rare Roger Federer level, the wheels of his career have continuously crashed into injury roadblocks.

As he had many times before, Dimitrov retired tragically on the cusp of glory against Sinner—this time, he hurt a pectoral muscle; previously, feet, back, and knee issues have stopped him. At one point, Dimitrov retired mid-match at four straight grand slams. Since putting the fear into Sinner, he has struggled to get back to similar heights of performance. But right now, he looks to have finally completed his progression back to where he was a year ago. The Bulgarian stud, now 35, once again set the English grass on fire over the past week.

In his perpetually backwards hat, he stormed his way to within an inch of the quarterfinals; zipping one-handed backhands with his left knee nearly touching the ground, slicing the ball so to maximize the odd bounce of the grass, and serving his way out of every jam he found himself in. Everyone who once fell in love with Dimitrov was happy for the reunion, and to see him make good on the promise his talent cast more than a decade ago. 

Grigor’s late-blooming saga is a reminder of how nonlinear the road to tennis prestige can be: many a career does not fit the scripture written for late-teens, expected to make the most of their talent by their mid-twenties, then forgotten as soon as they don’t fulfill that plot. That plot never includes being the 146th-ranked player in the world, powering your way through Wimbledon as a season-18 wild card. The magical run ended Monday, however, with Dimitrov losing a five-set marathon to fellow wild card Arthur Fery, a Brit who has spent the tournament sleeping in his own bed. But making it this far, after all he’s been through and without injury, is a win in the meta of Dimitrov’s career—and a clear sign that, despite how it’s looked for the past year, he’s definitely not done yet.

The remaining field, on both the men’s and women’s sides, is replete with exactly the kind of young and second-stage players that Osaka and Dimitrov once were. Coco Gauff is only 22, but having debuted on the English grass with her shocking defeat of Serena Williams seven years ago, the two-time champion feels like a veteran who’s already lived a long tennis life. Flavio Cobolli and Felix Auger-Aliassime, 24 and 25 years of age, are vying to enter the air only currently occupied by Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, and hold space near the top of the tennis imagination for the next several years.

All of them might look at the longer stories of Osaka and Dimitrov and understand the sport differently. Staying gainful on the tour for a long time is hard enough. Championship ascension is a wholly more rugged thing, dying and reviving several times per decade. “Hope is fragile,” says Andre Agassi, “but hard to kill.” The eight-time slam champ, with a four-year gap between trophies in the 90’s, knows the art of the comeback as well as anyone. So no matter how solved by its biggest stars the bracket might look like before the matches are played, every grand slam tournament, now and forever, should be seen as an opportunity to place a permanent stake into the sport—no matter what it took to get it there, or how many times you’ve failed to do it before.