THE number of people who truly believed that Angelique Kerber could beat Serena Williams in the Australian Open final last night could probably have been counted on the fingers of one hand.
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However, she hadn’t won a Grand Slam final from a set down since defeating Lindsay Davenport in the final of the 2005 Australian Open, and has only ever done it twice.
Kerber celebrated her maiden grand slam victory by taking a swim in the Yarra river on Sunday and also sprayed champagne as she posed with the trophy at Government House in Melbourne.
Ominously, Williams was eight from eight in deciding sets of grand slam finals.
“Now I have beaten Serena and won the championship”.
“Now I can say I’m a Grand Slam champion”, she told media members. Though she fell to Kerber in the final, the American remains just one major away from tying Graf’s Open Era record for most Grand Slam titles won, and is firmly behind Kerber at No. 2 on the Road to Singapore standings.
She extended that to 5-2 and was serving for the title at 5-3 before Williams fought back, although the inspired seventh seed was able to clinch her first major and then collapse onto the court in stunned disbelief.
Kerber shocked reigning champion Serena Williams in the women’s singles final to claim her first grand slam title at the age of 28.
Meanwhile, German footballer Bastian Schweinsteiger and Formula One star Nico Rosberg took to Twitter to congratulate their compatriot for her victorious campaign Down Under. “I do the best that I can”. “Enjoy the moment. You truly deserve it”.
If that is to be Doi’s only line in tennis history, Kerber has the potential to write a few more. Her best finishes in the others: semifinals in the 2011 U.S. Open and at Wimbledon in 2012, the same year she reached the French Open quarterfinals.
“When I was match point down, I actually had one leg in the plane back to Germany”, Kerber said. That has not always caused her to lose in the past, but the splendid play of Kerber, coupled with some shaky play by Williams, was enough to knock off the defending champion. USA Today quoted her description of how she unraveled Williams’ game. “The third set every game was really close”.
The left-handed Kerber broke Williams early in the third set, only to relinquish the advantage.
Kerber won’t have much time to catch up with her family, because on Tuesday she is to join the German team who are to take on Switzerland in the first found of the Fed Cup on the weekend. Despite her reputation as the most powerful server on tour, she only put her first serve in play 53 percent of the time in the final. The 34-year-old had steamrolled her opposition over the last two weeks, and was expected to continue doing so against the seventh-seeded German, who came in seeking her first major trophy.
The mental conditioning paid off.
“Maybe it’s the second”, she said, when asked if it felt like a new career was beginning, adding that she had proven herself not just by beating Williams but also two-time champion Victoria Azarenka in the quarter-finals.
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“I mean, yeah, Steffi is a champion”.
