Karolina Muchova has reached the semifinals at every Grand Slam. Until Tuesday, Wimbledon was the exception. The 10th-seeded Czech beat Naomi Osaka 7-6(4), 6-4 on No. 1 Court to reach the last four at the All England Club for the first time, closing out the one major semifinal that had eluded her at the tournament her game appears built to reward.
The missing box. Muchova had already reached the semifinals at the Australian Open, Roland Garros — where she was the 2023 runner-up — and the US Open. Wimbledon had resisted her. She lost both her previous quarterfinals here, in 2019 and 2021, then exited early in the years that followed. Her all-court game, built on slice, net play and constant changes of tempo, is the profile most often described as ideal for grass, which made the gap on her résumé the more conspicuous. She acknowledged the history afterward, saying she had “a not good relationship with this court.”
How she got here. Muchova reached the quarterfinals by beating 2024 champion Barbora Krejcikova, then produced one of her cleanest grass performances against Osaka, who had knocked out world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka a round earlier. Osaka took an early lead but faded through a first-set tiebreak, and Muchova broke late in the second before serving out the match with consecutive aces. Osaka finished with 32 unforced errors, her most of the fortnight.
The road back. The run caps a long recovery. A right-wrist injury forced Muchova to withdraw from the 2023 WTA Finals and undergo surgery in early 2024, sidelining her for months and dropping her down the rankings. She returned in mid-2024 and rebuilt through the past two seasons, arriving at Wimbledon this year having won the grass-court title in Bad Homburg the week before the Championships began.
What’s next. Muchova will face seventh seed Coco Gauff, who beat fellow American Jessica Pegula to reach her own first Wimbledon semifinal. Gauff leads their head-to-head 6-1, with Muchova’s lone win coming on grass in Stuttgart this year. Muchova has never won a major; a first Wimbledon final would put her one match from ending that wait, on the surface that took the longest to yield.
