Daily Times

LONDON: Germany’s Angelique Kerber proved too steady for error-strewn Latvian Jelena Ostapenko as she reached her second Wimbledon final with a comfortable 6-3 6-3 victory on Thursday. A first-ever duel between the two Grand Slam champions with diametrically opposed playing styles ultimately boiled down to a simple mathematical formula. Young firebrand Ostapenko’s 30 winners far outweighed the 10 struck by the wily Kerber but the 36 unforced errors she committed made for an ugly balance sheet. The 30-year-old Kerber, who offered up only a miserly seven free points, really just had to stay calm and wait for her opponent to self-destruct and Ostapenko fell into the trap. Former world number one Kerber needed only 68 minutes to reach her fourth Grand Slam final in which she will face either seven-times champion Serena Williams, who beat her in the 2016 final here, or fellow German Julia Georges.

The first game, served by Ostapenko, epitomised the match and illustrated just why the 21-year-old has become such a “must see” player on the WTA Tour and why watching American great Billie Jean King describes her style as “so much fun”. Kerber is now back in a Grand Slam title match for the first time since beating Karolina Pliskova in the 2016 U.S. Open final – having begun that year by stunning Serena Williams in the final of the Australian Open. After suffering a drastic slump in 2017, ending the year ranked outside the top 20, Kerber is back where she feels she clearly belongs.

Published in Daily Times, July 13^th 2018.