The Woman Behind Wimbledon's Iconic Finger of Fate
An interview with the woman whose finger unwittingly created one of the most enduring images in modern Wimbledon history during the 2019 Djokovic-Federer final.
WIMBLEDON, England — During my brief time back at home between France and England this year, I started thinking about what stories I most wanted to write here on Bounces during my 10th trip to cover Wimbledon.
So much of Wimbledon history already feels so well-worn, told and retold and retold over decades; what mysteries might still remain about the mythos of this place?
And then, I thought of her.
She was only on screen during the 2019 Wimbledon men’s singles final for 3.16 seconds, but I had seen her face—and her finger—countless times since then. From one pivotally-timed crowd shot, she had gained tennis internet eternality.
This random woman in the Centre Court crowd—gleefully holding up one finger to show that Roger Federer needed just “one more” point to defeat Novak Djokovic and win his ninth Wimbledon title and 21st major title overall—had become the lasting, indelible image of the twist ending of the golden generation known as the Big 3.
The moment gained immortality because, as you likely know, that “one more” point didn’t ever come for Federer: Djokovic stormed back from two match points down to not only win that year’s Wimbledon, but to overtake Federer (and Nadal) in the all-time major count, ultimately becoming the nearly-undisputed greatest men’s tennis player of all time.
At the press conference following his 2025 Wimbledon quarterfinal win on Wednesday evening, Djokovic grinned when I showed a printed screenshot of the woman to him and asked him if he recognized her.
“Of course, of course,” he said, smiling. “Seen it many times.”
I wanted to learn the story of the woman behind the finger that had birthed a thousand tennis memes, who had been seen so much but never heard.
And after some pretty high-grade internet sleuthing—if I do say so myself—I found her.
This is her story.
Meet Melanie
Melanie, unsurprisingly, first asked how I had found her. But once I explained my intentions why I was interested in her story, she agreed to do a phone interview, eager to share more about her long journey with tennis and Wimbledon in particular. (I’m not using her surname to protect her privacy because she’s not meaningfully a public figure.)
Melanie told me she had played tennis since age 7, playing various competitions in the south of England, in both Kent and Sussex. While playing for her university team, Melanie was invited to be part of a development program for line umpires in Edinburgh in the early 2000s.
“I found that I could call a good ball,” she said.
Since the Lawn Tennis Association—Britain’s governing body for the sport—was looking to develop more young female British chair umpires at that time, Melanie was “fast-forwarded” to a chair umpiring course.
“Suddenly I found myself on the lines at Wimbledon, and—very quickly after that—on the chairs at Wimbledon,” Melanie said.
Aside from Wimbledon, she also officiated at Davis Cup, Fed Cup, the 2012 London Olympics, and Roland Garros.
“It was great, and I had some fantastic experiences,” she said. “I’ve been on court with basically all of the great players during that time.”
Melanie stopped umpiring around 2016, instead focusing on her own recreational tennis play at the Rye Lawn Tennis Club in East Sussex.
In 2019, Melanie returned to Wimbledon—this time not as a line judge or chair umpire, but as a ticketholder with a “very, very good seat on Centre Court.”
Melanie at the 2019 Wimbledon Men’s Final
Melanie attended the 2019 Wimbledon Men’s Final with her brother, and got swept away by the atmosphere—which was raucously in Federer’s favor, as all his matches against Djokovic at Wimbledon were.
“Along with all the other thousands of fans of Federer, on that day I got very much caught up in it,” Melanie told me. “And not being in an official capacity, but just as a fan, I was able to really enjoy it, essentially. Because obviously when you're in an officiating capacity, you have to be completely impartial, you know? I'd given that up a few years previously, so I was able to absolutely attend as a fan and enjoy it. And as a life-long Federer fan, I was absolutely caught up in the moment.”
Melanie was one of thousands who were impassionedly cheering for Federer.
“We were in the crowd going absolutely crazy,” she recalled. “The crowd started giving almost like standing ovations to every error flying off the Djokovic racquet as the match headed towards this crazy climax.”
As the battle between 37-year-old Federer and 32-year-old Djokovic reached that climax—with Federer hitting his 22nd and 23rd aces of the day to give himself double championship point at 8-7 in the fifth set—a cameraman and a producer honed in on Melanie holding up one finger to show Federer he needed just one more point. A woman wearing blue to Melanie’s left can be seen echoing her cheer of “one more!”, but Melanie is the clear star of the frame.
“Unbeknown to me—completely unbeknown to me—they got this shot,” Melanie told me.
Once the camera had gotten its shot, Federer started missing his. After the camera had shown Melanie—and then Federer, and then Federer’s wife Mirka, and then Federer again—Federer missed a first serve and then sent a forehand wide on his first championship point. On the second championship point, Federer came forward on a cautious approach shot and Djokovic whipped a forehand passing shot by him. That would be as close as Federer came to victory: two points later, Djokovic broke serve to level the fifth set at 8-8.
In all, Federer lost seven consecutive points after Melanie had put up one finger, completely swinging the momentum of the match.
The match would go on for another 45 minutes, and Djokovic would prevail 7-6(5), 1-6, 7-6(4), 4-6, 13-12(3).
“There were all these partisan cheers and roars in the crowd,” Melanie said of the boisterous support for Federer. “We had the top seed and defending champion Djokovic crawling over the finishing line. I mean, it was extraordinary, him picking up his fifth Wimbledon title. But we were just gutted. We were, absolutely, yeah.”
Push Notifications of Fame
When Melanie switched her phone back on as she left Centre Court at the end of the 4 hour, 57 minute match, messages to her came pouring in.
“When I came off court at the end of the match, I turned my phone on and my phone just pinged continually,” she told me.
Melanie teaches at a private school in Berkshire, and she was receiving messages from both colleagues and pupils.
“They were saying, ‘Miss! We've just seen you on TV! Oh my God, that was you!’” Melanie recalled. “I had thought nothing of it. I had no idea that they'd captured that image. And I had thought nothing of that moment, because I was just one of the members of the crowd.”
It wasn’t until she later saw herself in the match footage that she even remembered making the gesture.
“There was my finger: ‘One more point,’” she said. “A confident Federer fan, I was, raising my finger and suggesting that Federer only needed one more point to win and clinch the title. And, obviously as things turned out, Novak Djokovic mounted the most epic comeback. Because I think at the time no one gave him that chance to clinch his fifth championship title. Obviously a win to remember for him for ages, but I think fans were so desperate to see Federer win that 21st major.”
Before I’d even asked her, Melanie asked herself: did she and her one finger jinx Federer out of that desperately desired win?
“Do I feel partly responsible for Federer losing that match? I hope not, because, gosh, it was one of the worst chokes ever, I think, for Federer,” Melanie said. “He had two match points on his own serve! I don't know. I just felt he should have got it on that first serve. And it was just extraordinary. I mean, it the best match to be at. It was one the most epic matches. Just even to have been courtside was good enough for me, let alone to have this whole picture thing going on. I mean, it's ridiculous.
“It was unbeknown to me that this thing had gone viral on the internet; I don’t know about Twitter or any of these things,” Melanie continued. “I don't do any of the social media websites, so I don't know about any of this. It was my friends at my tennis club who told me, and people from abroad texting images saying ‘Mel, Oh my god, we’ve just seen you!’”
At the boarding school where she teaches in Berkshire, Melanie has the “old fashioned title: the Master-in-Charge of Senior Boys’ Tennis.”
The boys on her team, she said, “think this is the coolest thing, having their teacher on Twitter.”
Melanie still isn’t sure why she was zoomed in on in that fateful moment. Maybe, she’s wondered, someone at BBC thought she looked familiar from her years as a line judge?
“I don’t know, I have no idea,” she said, still perplexed. “Yeah, I’ve hardly looked at it. Genuinely, I’m just sort of embarrassed about it, really—in a nice way. Just as sort of…‘Gosh.’”
“An Unknowing Avatar”
There’s, of course, one fanbase that’s far more eager to keep Melanie’s image and other memories of the 2019 Wimbledon final alive, six years on from the final.
Her name hadn’t been known to the broader public before this article, but Melanie’s face—and finger—have become a core and enduring part of the iconography at various online shrines to Djokovic on social media and tennis message boards
Not knowing her name, many Djokovic fans have just called her “Finger Lady.”
I asked one of my Djokovic fan friends, Katrina, to articulate what the image of “Finger Lady” meant to Djokovic fans, and why it became so resonant and lasting.
Katrina went big, saying the image struck a chord and represented “15+ years of resentment and antagonism between Federer and Novak fans.”
Federer, Katrina believes, represented the “mold” of what fans who saw “tennis as a sport for ladies and gentlemen” wanted in a player.
“Then Novak comes along and nobody seemed to know what to do with him,” Katrina said. “So he wound up getting cast as this trashy, brutish villain from this poor, war-torn country who gatecrashed the party…as a Novak fan, I obviously reject that view of him entirely. He’s a wonderful, thoughtful and very loving person, and obviously a superior athlete.”
With her white button-up shirt and confident certainty that Federer would win what was rightfully his, Melanie represented the pro-Federer establishment crowd which overwhelmingly dominated Centre Court that day, Katrina said.
“It’s not overstating it to say that probably only Novak’s box was cheering for him that day,” Katrina said. “That was the way it was for most matches against Fed, but this one was particularly partisan. I think Federer and his fans have always seemed to think Wimbledon was ‘theirs’…Then at like peak insanity, you have this image of this one woman who, without knowing it, encapsulated both the total hubris and ultimate downfall of Federer fans re: Novak. Like, honestly, it’s too good. And then for the match to end the way it did? Frankly, I couldn’t think of a more perfect ending—it tickled every pleasure center in my brain. And I still laugh thinking about Novak’s grin at the end. Delicious!”
Katrina is an admitted Djokovic diehard who will happily go nuts for her guy, but she also is aware enough to come up for air once in a while.
“She’s probably a very nice lady who just loves tennis and accidentally became an unknowing avatar in this strange, mostly online posting war between two deranged fandoms,” Katrina said of Melanie. “I hope she sees the funny side of it.”
Novak Djokovic: The Man Who Defied the Finger
I was pretty sure Novak Djokovic, who reliably keeps tabs on what his fans are posting online, would know what I was talking about if I described the iconic image of Melanie.
But to leave no doubt, the kind folks at the Wimbledon media workroom desk printed out a screenshot of Melanie and her finger for me to use as a visual aid, and I had it ready to show him from my seat at his press conference on Wednesday evening.
As you can see, Djokovic smiled as soon as he saw her.
Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: I'm working on a story about one of the most famous images of your Wimbledon history, which is this one, when you were down championship points in 2019. You recognize this.
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Of course, of course. Seen it many times (smiling).
Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: What are your thoughts when you look at this picture? Where do you see it around, and how does it make you feel?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Look, I mean, I haven't seen it when I was playing on the court. But I know exactly when it happened because lots of my fans have been sharing, reposting that picture—and they still do after, whatever, six years.
Djokovic then paused, understandably, hesitating on what to say further: he knows the gleeful, gloating way in which the photo is often wielded, and didn’t want to add to any pile-on from the podium
“Yeah, I mean, look: obviously, remembering 2019 finals is very positive for me because I won it, coming back from two match points down, but I can't really—how can I say—use that photo as the main reference of the match, because that means that I'll be poking a finger in someone's eyes,” Djokovic continued. “But I do understand why my fans are sharing that. It's OK. In the heat of the battle, those things happen. He was one [holding up one finger] point away, so... It didn't happen. I mean, it's sport.”
Before the press conference moved on, I wanted to be sure to tell Djokovic about the surprising denouement to my interview with Melanie, which I thought he would like to know.
Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: I talked to her today. She's rooting for you now.
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: You talked with her today? She's rooting for me now? Wow, OK, that's a nice turnaround. Very thankful for that.
From One Finger to the Glove on the Other Hand
Melanie was telling me more about how the tennis-loving kids at her school “get very excited” about her cameo role in tennis history when she suddenly mused about this year’s tournament: “What can I say: I’m hoping this year that Djokovic wins his last Wimbledon, frankly.”
Given all she has symbolized about opposing forces to Djokovic fandom and lore, this seemed like a major turn of events.
“I am rooting for him, so my allegiance has now changed,” Melanie confirmed, laughing. “I feel that's the least I can do. I mean, I love tennis, I love Federer, Djokovic—all of them. I just think they're amazing. And what an incredible legacy: Wimbledon, everything. I love it all.”
Melanie, like most people who touch grass, isn’t nearly as tribal as the online tennis fandoms keeping her likeness alive.
“Federer and Djokovic, both of them, I think they're amazing,” she said. “I just would love to see it for Djokovic—what is he, 38 now? He’s got a very good chance. And I think most people—or at least I certainly do—would like to see Djokovic become the GOAT, the Greatest Of All Time.”
Many, including myself, think Djokovic is already the greatest by any possible statistical measure. But to leave no doubt in the GOAT debate, Melanie wants Djokovic to surpass Margaret Court’s oft-asterisked record of 24 singles majors, which Djokovic currently equals.
“I'm a very fair person: I would love to see him finish at the top and win that one more title,” Melanie said. “That would be extraordinary. You've got Sinner, you've got Alcaraz, you got Shelton—you've some great people there. It's an exciting time for tennis, and for Djokovic to be playing at the level he is with those young guys coming through is just phenomenal. So yeah, I've always been a fan.
Melanie then acknowledged, of course, that one day on which her priorities visibly were different.
“But on that match, Federer-Djokovic, for that one time, I wanted Federer,” she said. “For that one point. It was just a special moment, it really was. It was really great to be part of it.”
For thoughts on more current happenings at Wimbledon—including Amanda Anisimova and Iga Swiatek winning Wimbledon semifinals on Thursday—please enjoy the latest episode of No Challenges Remaining with myself and The Guardian’s Tumaini Carayol.
Thanks for reading Bounces! -Ben
Melanie seems like a lovely and great person. I hope she doesn't ever feel like her moment was any kind of jinx on Roger. If there's one thing I've learned about tennis since becoming a recent and now enthusiastic fan, it's how unbelievably brutal it is and how near-impossible it is to stay consistent, even when you're one of the GOATs. It is a sport that turns on a dime; one bad serve, one awkward shot that's out by an inch, and suddenly your chance to win is over. You can get a sense of just how unpredictable tennis is from the number of sports bettors now raging (unacceptably and grotesquely) at tennis stars on social media; they're learning the financial way that in tennis there are no real favorites. Anyone can suddenly make a quick comeback or fall apart and stun Wimbledon - or another crowd.
Thanks for this great article (and being so creative with your article ideas)! I have seen this picture used as a meme so often that I have wondered about this lady's story from time to time. So it was such a nice surprise to see this article!