Wimbledon champion Markéta Vondroušová announces split from partner

The 2023 Wimbledon women’s champion Markéta Vondroušová has announced that she will be getting divorced from her husband of a year and a half, Stepan Simek.

She married Šimek back in 2022, having become engaged to him in the previous year. Vondroušová said that the marriage ‘didn’t work out’.

As well as winning last year’s Wimbledon Championships, Vondroušová reached the quarter-finals of the competitions in 2017 - and reached the quarters of the US Open last year.

Speaking to Czech news outlet Blesk, Vondroušová said: “I'm definitely not having a happy time in the last few weeks. Our marriage with Stepan ended a few weeks ago, we broke up. He moved out of [the house] with the cat. Now we're all single and we don't have anyone.

“It just didn't work out for us. It wasn't what we both imagined, so we agreed not to be together any more. Now we are formally resolving the divorce, but we have agreed on everything.”

This is not the only source of heartache for Vondroušová. She is also mourning the loss of her grandfather earlier in the year. She dropped out of the Indian Wells tournament early to be with him upon learning that his condition had deteriorated.

On the death of her grandfather, Vondroušová said: "It's hard for me to talk about it even now. One realises what is important in the world and essential in life, that tennis is definitely not everything. My grandfather was the person who stood at the very beginning of my tennis career, he was there for everything important. Without him, I would never have achieved what I have achieved in my career.

"I was with my family, my parents and my sister. We supported and held each other, we all loved Grandpa very much. And we said goodbye to him together, even though there was no public funeral."