Jana Novotna’s first serve didn’t clear the net. So she gave her second serve some more air. Much more air. Too much air, in truth.

The ball fizzed and looped and arched beyond the service-box - and it didn’t just miss by an inch or two, but by a good three feet, a margin of error that made Centre Court gasp. In that moment, as the line-judge went through the superfluous act of calling Novotna’s serve ‘out’, the Czech couldn’t have possibly imagined that she had just hit the most iconic double-fault in the history of tennis (and, almost a quarter of a century later, it still has that status).

It was a double-fault that would flip a Wimbledon final. More than that, it was a double-fault that, within minutes, would have her weeping on the shoulder of the Duchess of Kent, and which for years would follow her around the global tennis circuit.

Even now, when Novotna is long retired from her playing career, she still can’t escape that error – whether it’s fair or not, she will always be remembered for double-faulting against Steffi Graf in the 1993 Wimbledon final. Here was the woman who, when just five points away from winning the Venus Rosewater Dish for the first time, gagged in a Wimbledon final. “I don’t think I’m a choker, but I’ve got a label on my back which says, ‘at the most important point of a big match, Jana will choke’. The label is almost impossible to get rid of,” she once said. “I could win three straight tournaments, and people would still say, ‘Yes, she can play well, but remember the Wimbledon final when she choked?’” 

If you have ever wondered whether a Wimbledon final can turn on one point, you only have to watch back the tape of this match when Novotna, up a double-break in the third set, had a point for a 5-1 lead. There’s probably a parallel universe in which that second serve landed in the service-box, and Novotna went on to defeat Graf. As it was, the scoreboard moved from 40-30 to deuce and suddenly – having appeared to have been in total command – Novotna’s game, her composure and her world completely unravelled.

The speed at which this happened was astonishing, with Novotna missing an easy volley on the next point, before putting an overhead in the net to lose her serve. Game Graf. Novotna wouldn’t win another game. As the American writer Malcolm Gladwell has observed: “Novotna was unrecognisable, not an elite tennis player but a beginner again.”

Metaphorically, has a Wimbledon finalist ever been in greater need of the Heimlich Manoeuvre? The All England Club had never known a turnaround like it, and Novotna’s head was still in a state of confusion and bewilderment as the Duchess of Kent presented her with the plate for the runner-up.

No one cared that crying on the Duchess’s shoulder was almost certainly a breach of royal etiquette. And no one cared less than the Duchess, who said to Novotna: “One day you will do it – I know you will.”

One columnist in the United States would rename her ‘No-No Novotna from Choke-Oslovakia’, and there were plenty of other cruel comments, too. Novotna’s analysis was different to everyone else’s. She hadn’t choked at all, she said. Quite the opposite – she had been bold and pro-active. “All I was doing was going for my shots. That’s the way I play. It had worked in the semi-final and also in the quarter-final. OK, I gave her a chance with the second serve and also with the easy volley. But I’ve looked at the tape again and I would play it like that again,” she has said. “I wanted to win myself, instead of waiting for Steffi to lose. Unfortunately, she started playing better and I didn’t. Does that make me a choker? How many chokers get to the Wimbledon final?”

Four years later, she would play for the title again, this time against Martina Hingis. While Novotna took the opening set and had her opportunities in the decider, it wasn’t to be, though on that occasion it had nothing to do with her psyche and everything to do with an injured stomach muscle. Fortunately for Novotna, and for all those who wished her well, that wasn’t the end of her Wimbledon story and in 1998, so five years after that double-fault against Graf, she would reach another final, in which she beat Frenchwoman Nathalie Tauziat. No one was more pleased than the Duchess of Kent, who said to the new champion: “I’m so proud of you.”