With the Williams Sisters and Sloane Stephens, Victoria Azarenka and Caroline Wozniacki still in the draw, it’s very easy to overlook the 2016 Open Champion Angelique Kerber, who has just as a legit chance to win this tournament as the rest of the draw.
It’s someone to keep an eye out for as Kerber is now into the third round after beating Sweden’s Johanna Larrson, 6-2 5-7 6-4.
“I think it was really a tough match and a tough battle, especially in the third set. I think that I played, like, good until like 5-2 in the second set, and I was really trying to playing the game I was planned to play,” Kerber said. “Yeah, and then I think it is tennis that you have to play until the last point. She came back. She played good when she was down, and she had nothing to lose then.”
Kerber got the tough end of the draw today, as she started first, when it was still hot out, before the weather broke.
“I think, you know, the conditions are really tough out there also today,” she said. “But, I mean, at the end, in the third set, it was just like two, three points which decide the match. Yeah, I was happy that at the end I could, yeah, serve the match until the end.”
Kerber is coming off a win at Wimbledon, her third Grand Slam of her career. She has been kind of strange in the slams, as well. In 16, she won two, but last year she went out in the first round of the Open.
Now she’s back on top, looking to do a title defense one year late.
And like today, she’s having a rough time of it.
“I’m trying to playing as I would like to play, but of course, I mean, the legs are getting a little bit heavier, especially if you are, like, more than two hours on court on these conditions,” she said.
“But I know also that I worked a lot for my fitness, so this is what I’m also thinking that, you know, I put a lot of effort for my work, for my fitness. I know that I can run. But, of course, sometimes when the rallies are getting longer and longer, you try to go for it when you have the chance.
“But at the end you have to wait for the moment.”
That moment seems to be right now for the No. 4 seed.
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