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Most new Wimbledon champions have a bucket list of things they want to do, gifts they would like to buy themselves or family, or even future goals of winning more grand slam titles. But Linda Noskova is not your average first-time major winner.
The 21-year-old Czech is surely the first woman to win Wimbledon with a nose ring – “I was maybe counting a little bit [on] someone having some things to say about it, but no one said anything bad” – but she intends to use her newfound platform for good.
“This is definitely one of the main [reasons] why I’m playing tennis,” she said, while munching some pasta in a small interview room at Wimbledon, a few hours after her triumph. “I want to have the voice not only on court but off court to possibly make a difference about some stuff. If I’m going to start with, literally, recycling or helping nature, or helping people in need in different countries, it’s all on my bucket list.”
Noskova saw off her compatriot Karolina Muchova in a dramatic final, letting slip a 6-2, 5-2 lead and squandering five championship points before regrouping impressively in the third set to win 6-2, 5-7, 6-3 and become the sixth woman from her country to win the title in the open era.
The victory will move her to a career-high ranking of No 7 when the list is updated on Monday (Muchova will rise to No 6) and her status in the game is suddenly elevated beyond her dreams. In all, she did 19 interviews after the final; 16 television one-on-ones, two round-table chats with written press and one with the WTA, the women’s governing body.
She has always had a social conscience, eschewing the usual tennis player pre-Christmas beach holiday last December to instead work as a volunteer in a school in Zanzibar, Tanzania – a trip she said at the time was “one of the most meaningful experiences of my life”.
Noskova ended her on-court speech on Saturday with a tribute to her mother, Ivana, who died from cancer just before Wimbledon in 2024. Noskova said her mother and father helped to foster her love for the environment.
“I feel like I was brought up that way, maybe,” she said. “I’m from a small village. I always had a very close or easy path to nature. I was basically living in the forest. I had a very carefree and freedom kind of childhood, so it has always been close to me. But volunteering or doing some social work or helping the animals, nature, something like that, is definitely something that I want to do even after my career.”
Noskova said she would be keeping the nose ring for the foreseeable future, having followed up her win on grass last month in Berlin with the biggest title of them all at Wimbledon. The Princess of Wales did not comment on the ring, she said, but told her how impressed she was with her fighting spirit, the way she recovered after missing all those match points.
“I believe she saw a lot of tennis matches, a lot of tennis finals, but she appreciated how tough this match was,” Noskova said. “We definitely made it interesting, and especially me, I had so many chances. But I would say that overall, it was a very, very good match for both of us.”
Czech tennis continues its incredible relationship with Wimbledon, with Noskova the third woman from Czechia to win the title in the past four years. Two other all-time greats, the nine‑time champion Martina Navratilova and Petra Kvitova, were in the royal box to watch the final, although Noskova was trying to focus on the task at hand.
“I tried not to look at the royal box,” she said. “I don’t want to get distracted. I did see Petra before the match and Martina Navratilova in a few interviews in previous rounds, but I really didn’t want to know who was watching my mistakes or my winners.”
Putting a finger on just why Czech tennis has been so strong is the million-dollar question, certainly something the LTA would love to replicate in Britain. Noskova joked on 5 Live that it might be “something in the beer” but she gave a deeper insight into why they have produced so many champions.
“I always like to say that we can look at the history,” she said. “I guess there’s always someone winning Wimbledon or [doing well] in a grand slam, so we’re such a small country, so it’s easy for us to say, if them, why not me?
“We have so many tennis clubs, so many great Czech coaches. I feel like in every city there’s a tennis place or tennis club, so there’s a lot of possibilities for young kids to start playing tennis, and there’s always someone there. In juniors, we always have someone who’s winning this or that. But obviously the transition going from juniors to WTA or ATP is very tough.”
Not for Noskova, who is now well set to kick on from here, with the US Open being the next obvious target, beginning at the end of August. She is also very likely to qualify for the season‑ending WTA Finals, for the top eight players in the calendar year, which will be held in Indian Wells.
And she may also return to Zanzibar at some stage, having had such a great experience last year, though she won’t be able to take the official Wimbledon trophy with her. Instead winners receive a replica trophy to take away. “I can’t even keep it,” she said. “But I did have an idea that I would take some tennis rackets the next time I go there.”
