For Gaby Dabrowski, the Wimbledon grass has meaning far beyond its feel under foot.
The 34-year-old Canadian doubles star, a two-time Grand Slam winner and two-time Wimbledon finalist, came to the grass two years ago, just weeks after undergoing two surgeries for breast cancer. She and her then-partner, New Zealand’s Erin Routliffe, won the Nottingham Open and reached the final at the Eastbourne Open and at Wimbledon.
“I was adamant I would not be a victim of my circumstance,” Dabrowski said in an interview earlier this year. “Yes, there were a lot of tough moments, I was like, ‘OK, I’m not going to feel sorry for myself. We have information, we have treatment, and I’m going to go through it, and we’ll see.’ Some people around me probably were freaking out more than I was.”
Two years on, it’s easy to forget what Dabrowski went through and continues to go through. She and her new partner, Luisa Stefani of Brazil, go deep in nearly every tournament they enter. They won the Strasbourg Open last month and lost in the semifinals of the French Open to the eventual champions, Siniaková and Townsend, on a day Stefani was playing with a virus.
And on the grass, Dabrowski and Stefani got to the Eastbourne Open final, ahead of competing in Wimbledon’s 2026 edition as the No. 3 seeds. Of course, they won the whole thing, taking down Jesika Malečková and Miriam Škoch 6-1, 6-4.
Dabrowski is doing all that while managing the side effects of hormone therapy to help keep her cancer in remission. She is still taking a medication called Tamoxafin, which blocks the hormone estrogen from attaching to cancer cells, preventing their growth.
