Angelique Kerber stunned the overwhelming favourite Serena Williams to win the Australian Open on Saturday and thwart the American top seed`s bid to equal Steffi Graf`s Open-era record of 22 Grand Slam titles.
The seventh seed played some exceptional tennis to upstage the World No.1 and toppled the 34-year-old Serena Williams 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 to win her maiden major title in three grueling sets which lasted two hours and 10 minutes at the Rod Laver Arena and become the first German Grand Slam champion since Graf at the 1999 French Open.
The ultimate measure of Serena Williams is that all this century, the entire cohort of women tennis players has been out to get her, unavailingly. Fifteen different players have popped up out of that ruck to play her in finals, and 14 have been ruthlessly slapped back down. In finals, she was near to invincible, in Melbourne finals unbeaten. Here, she was playing to match Steffi Graf's aggregate of 22 major championships. But if records are there to be broken, history is also there to be made. Coolly, brilliantly, Angelique Kerber made it. "Unglaublich," her compatriots would say. Unbelievable.
For most of the night, not even an algorithm could have made sense of proceedings. When Kerber won the first set, half the world's data banks must have exploded. When she made an early break in the third, the other half must have self-immolated, too. When she made the winning break, even the hastily dusted- off abacuses would have fallen apart. But the centre court crowd could verify it all with their own ever widening eyes.
Sometimes, you would have sworn Kerber's lefthandedness disoriented her; she hit to Kerber's backhand, realising only as the ball passed over the net that it was fore. The angles were all different, and Kerber kept measuring them off. As the match took its shape and direction, Kerber could see what she would have known beforehand, that all she had to do was to keep the ball in play. It is a big "all". But with deceptive poise, and then reassurance, and then aplomb, she did.
The seventh seed played some exceptional tennis to upstage the World No.1 and toppled the 34-year-old Serena Williams 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 to win her maiden major title in three grueling sets which lasted two hours and 10 minutes at the Rod Laver Arena and become the first German Grand Slam champion since Graf at the 1999 French Open.
The ultimate measure of Serena Williams is that all this century, the entire cohort of women tennis players has been out to get her, unavailingly. Fifteen different players have popped up out of that ruck to play her in finals, and 14 have been ruthlessly slapped back down. In finals, she was near to invincible, in Melbourne finals unbeaten. Here, she was playing to match Steffi Graf's aggregate of 22 major championships. But if records are there to be broken, history is also there to be made. Coolly, brilliantly, Angelique Kerber made it. "Unglaublich," her compatriots would say. Unbelievable.
For most of the night, not even an algorithm could have made sense of proceedings. When Kerber won the first set, half the world's data banks must have exploded. When she made an early break in the third, the other half must have self-immolated, too. When she made the winning break, even the hastily dusted- off abacuses would have fallen apart. But the centre court crowd could verify it all with their own ever widening eyes.
Sometimes, you would have sworn Kerber's lefthandedness disoriented her; she hit to Kerber's backhand, realising only as the ball passed over the net that it was fore. The angles were all different, and Kerber kept measuring them off. As the match took its shape and direction, Kerber could see what she would have known beforehand, that all she had to do was to keep the ball in play. It is a big "all". But with deceptive poise, and then reassurance, and then aplomb, she did.
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