The 26-year-old is the first Tunisian woman to reach the
last eight at Wimbledon and will face Belarus second seed Aryna Sabalenka who
defeated Elena Rybakina 6-3, 4-6, 6-3.
Sabalenka will be playing in her first Grand Slam
quarter-final.
Jabeur celebrated victory with a fist pump and a yell of
delight but for once she was not a lone Tunisian voice as some spectators burst
out into song.
"Tunisians are everywhere, I got to say," she
said.
"Yeah, they were singing actually a football song. I
felt the need to sing with them also.
"I felt so happy that I wanted, like, to hear more. I
was doing like this to hear them (cupping a hand to one ear)"
Jabeur's exploits in the past few weeks have give huge
momentum to her mission to encourage more Arab women, especially North African,
to take up the sport.
She admitted, though, that to get to where she is now has
taken a lot of resilience to overcome setbacks.
"Maybe one of them was 2018, I started really bad the
season, winning no matches," she said.
"I was doubting myself a lot. I think early in my
career, after the juniors, when I didn't see the results that I wanted, when I
was seeing the juniors that I played with breaking the top 50, top 40,it was
very difficult for me.
"I've worked hard to earn my place here."
'Carry this message'
However, with her maiden WTA title under her belt -- the
first Arab woman to achieve that -- and now her run to the quarter-finals at
Wimbledon she could not have done more to raise the profile of herself and her
broader goal.
"It is very important to me," she said.
"I have seen it, heard it, a lot of times coming here
on tour from where I come, I need to gain my respect either with the players or
anyone around here.
"I just want to give the example for many generations
coming from North Africa, from my country, from the African continent, that
it's not impossible, that we can do it.
"I'm trying to carry this message for a very long time.
Hopefully it is working."
Jabeur showed great poise to stay in the match after she let
slip a 5-4 lead and serving for the first set only for the Pole to reel off
three games on the bounce.
Swiatek, after a flat opening, had taken note of a young
Polish fan holding up a board inscribed 'Jazda Iga' ('Come on Iga').
"It was a great match and I had to stay calm rather
than get angry when I failed to close out the first set as getting angry would
not have helped my cause," said Jabeur.
"Today I decided to change my game a bit as everyone
knows I am doing drop shots and being aggressive was key today."
Jabeur never looked back once she had got over the loss of
the first set.
Breaking her 20-year-old opponent in the first game of the
second set set the tone for the rest of the encounter.
Indeed such was her dominance that Swiatek at one point
having been out-witted by a Jabeur drop shot smashed the top of the net angrily
with her racquet.