WIMBLEDON, England — For three grueling sets, Angelique Kerber would not be bullied. In the most exhausting test of her endurance, along with her character, she would not be beaten.
Five match points — and six in all — had come and gone in the 10th game of the third set, which began with Kerber leading by 5-4 and out to a 0-40 lead, one stroke away from celebrating a fourth-round upset of fifth-seeded Maria Sharapova.’
Sharapova, unwilling to let go of the rope, kept hitting out, painting the lines, making sure Kerber contemplated all those wasted opportunities to cross the threshold, into the Wimbledon quarterfinals.
The battle raged through the match points, five deuces and two game points for Sharapova, who seemed at those moments on the verge of crushing her worthy opponent’s spirit.
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“Believe in your game,” Kerber, seeded ninth, told herself.
Her southpaw game, in summary, was a testament to survival, her willingness to be run ragged by Sharapova and manufacture a return, one way or another. At deuce No. 5, she scrambled to the baseline for a Sharapova lob and returned deep enough to bait her into a forehand error. On match point No. 7, a deep return of serve induced a long Sharapova backhand.
With the completion of Kerber’s 7-6 (4), 4-6, 6-4 victory over 2 hours 37 minutes on Centre Court, Sharapova’s dream of combined 10th anniversary and second Wimbledon championship celebrations expired, along with her hopes of executing French Open and Wimbledon titles back to back.
“She’s never really a player that gives you a lot of mistakes or lots of errors,” said Sharapova, who made more than her fair share, 49 unforced errors to 11 by Kerber. “You really have to win the match against her.
“She’s a great anticipator of the ball, one of the best. I don’t think she has a very huge weapon, but the fact that she makes you play such a physical match, gets so many balls back, and not just back but deep and hard and flat, yeah, it says something.”
For Kerber, the victory in a match that was postponed by rain Monday meant a giant leap forward in a tournament suddenly wide open with the early departures of the top two seeds, Serena Williams and Li Na, along
with a rusty Victoria Azarenka and now Sharapova. But Kerber’s draw got no easier; waiting for her in Wednesday’s quarterfinal is the No. 13-seeded Eugenie Bouchard, a rising Canadian who took Sharapova to three sets before losing in the French Open semifinals.