No. 8 seeds Veronika Kudermetova and Elise Mertens are the 2025 Wimbledon ladies’ doubles champions after an enthralling final on Centre Court on Sunday.

Kudermetova and Mertens fought past No. 4 seeds Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko 3-6, 6-2, 6-4 in a 2-hour and 23-minute thriller to take the championship trophy.

The victors made comeback after comeback on Sunday. After battling to level the match at one set apiece, Kudermetova and Mertens were down 4-2 in the third set — but they won the next four games to hoist the hardware.

“It’s an incredible feeling,” Mertens said in the champions’ press conference. “There is no feeling like winning The Championships. It was a very close match today. I was so happy that we converted our first match point. So, yeah, two happy people.”

Successful reunion: It is a big win for Kudermetova — she was the only player of the four who had not previously won a Grand Slam doubles title. Now she joins that list, four years after failing to convert two championship points in the 2021 Wimbledon doubles final.

“For the moment, I mean me, right now, [I don’t] feel that I’m Wimbledon champion in doubles,” Kudermetova said. “Maybe in the evening or tomorrow I will realize it.

“When I finish the match, I mean, was so emotional. I even start to cry a little bit, but then I saw Elise. She cry, [so] OK, I have to hold my emotion!”

This is Mertens’ fifth Grand Slam doubles title, and second at Wimbledon. She and Hsieh teamed up to win the 2021 Wimbledon doubles title — in fact, they were the ones who saved championship points and outlasted Kudermetova and Elena Vesnina in that aforementioned final. 

Kudermetova and Mertens were a top team in 2022, the year they won the WTA Finals. They disbanded for the 2023 and 2024 seasons, but re-paired this spring and made finals at WTA 1000 Madrid and Rome.

Now, in just their fifth event together since re-teaming, Kudermetova and Mertens have won the first title of their reunion here at Wimbledon.

“We played in the past, and we had some great results,” Mertens said. “We already felt like from the first match on, the first match we were back together, that you know, we’re a good team and we can trust each other, we can build together. I think this is a cherry on top of the cake.”

Mertens is now looking forward to an event she missed four years ago: “We have the Wimbledon [Champions’] Ball to go to. I won it in 2021, and it was COVID, so there was no ball. It’s going to be my first time too. So it’s going to be fun.”

Match moments: Ostapenko could have risen to WTA Doubles World No. 1 with a win today, and she was on track after she and Hsieh had a strong first-set comeback of their own. They were a point away from trailing 4-1, but they reeled off five games in a row to clinch the one-set lead.

In the second set, Kudermetova and Mertens led 3-1 once more. This time, they did not give up their lead, as Kudermetova’s volleys particularly started to click into gear. The pair broke the Hsieh serve twice in that set to tie up the final.

In the decisive third set, Ostapenko’s laser groundstrokes helped her and Hsieh come out on top in longer rallies, and they broke for 3-2. After Ostapenko held at love to consolidate for 4-2, her squad had all the momentum.

But Kudermetova and Mertens went on the attack again in Hsieh’s next service game, and Kudermetova slammed a winning smash to break at love and level proceedings at 4-4.

At 5-4, 30-30, another lengthy rally saw Ostapenko fire a miscue wide, setting up championship point for Kudermetova and Mertens. There, Kudermetova exorcised the ghosts of 2021 by punching a volley winner to seal victory for her team.