Angelique Kerber remembers how it felt to play without pressure. The freedom of youth, the looseness of limb, the ability to just go out there and swing without care or consequence. Three-time grand slam champions are not afforded such luxuries. The Canadian teenager Leylah Fernandez will one day discover as much, but for now she is just revelling in the moment.
Her latest moment brought another victory that defied the odds as Fernandez, the world No 73, came from behind to reach the US Open quarter-finals at Kerber’s expense, consigning the 33-year-old to a 4-6, 7-6 (7-5), 6-2 win that demonstrated, lest there should be doubt, that her shock victory over defending champion Naomi Osaka was no flash in the pan.
At a set and 4-2 up, Kerber looked to be cruising into the last eight. Having put a sequence of three successive first-round losses at the majors behind her with a run to the Wimbledon semi-finals, and reached the same stage on the hard courts of Cincinnati, Kerber has been in resurgent form of late, and looked poised for another deep run in New York, where she was the champion five years ago.
But Fernandez, a tenacious lefty with an eye for the angles and an appetite for the fray, is a player cast in the same mould as Kerber. With defeat looming on the eve of her 19th birthday, she roused herself. She bounced, she roared, she smiled; she ignited the Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd with her energy and defiance, and discomfited Kerber with the electrifying audacity of her shot-making. The German fended off a set point at 6-5, but ultimately had no answer to the wave of youthful energy coming at her from the opposite side of the net.
How does Fernandez do it? “Having fun on the court, I think that’s the key to anybody’s success, especially mine,” said the Canadian, who will face Elina Svitolina for a place in the semi-finals after the Ukrainian fifth seed beat Simona Halep in straight sets.
“If I’m not happy, or I’m putting too much pressure on myself, I start making mistakes and I’m not enjoying myself. But these past few weeks I have been enjoying myself a lot on the tennis court, and that’s been a mindset of mine from the very beginning, [one] that not only my dad but also my mom has been telling me to do so that I can enjoy this life. I chose this profession and I want to enjoy it as much as possible and have fun – [it] is one of the biggest keys that I have.”
Her enjoyment was not shared by Kerber, who saw a 5-1 lead in the second-set tiebreak evaporate and looked physically and emotionally spent by the end. “It was a tough one,” said the 16th seed. “I gave everything I had today. She played an unbelievable match, especially in the third set. Also in the second. I think she played one of the best matches in her career, and she had nothing to lose. She went out there, she played her tennis. She really is going for her winners, and at the end it was just two, three points which decide the match. She took it in her hands.”
Kerber was magnanimous in defeat, hailing the “start of a great career” and acknowledging that Fernandez is “a little bit similar” to her style, albeit playing with a liberty that is the preserve of youth. “I remember the feeling really well,” she said. “I mean, she has no pressure. She’s going out there, she has a loose hand, she’s hitting the ball, and she was going forward. She did a good job. I mean, she was not shaking.”
Kerber added with a rueful smile: “I think [such freedom], it’s just [for] the young people. I wish, but I think it’s playing without completely pressure, it’s – in this position – impossible. But I wish.”
Fernandez, meanwhile, will just keep swinging. “I think from a very young age, I’m just a happy-go-lucky girl. I never really take things too seriously or some things too hard. I just have fun on anything and everything that I do.”
Fun was in short supply in the latter stages of Barbora Krejcikova’s 6-3, 7-6 (7-2) win over Garbiñe Muguruza. In a tense conclusion to the match, Muguruza recovered from 4-0 down in the second set, missed three set points and was leading 6-5 when Krejcikova, who said she was feeling unwell, left the court for a nine-minute medical timeout.
The French Open champion returned to hold to love, but infuriated Muguruza with her slow play in the tiebreak, trudging over to the side of the court to towel off as the Spaniard waited to serve. Muguruza made her feelings plain as the pair shook hands, ignoring her opponent’s apology as she branded the Czech “so unprofessional”.
“I don’t really want to talk about this,” Muguruza told the press afterwards. “I’ll let you guys judge what you think … I think, between players, you know a little bit how to behave in certain moments and, yeah, I wasn’t very happy at the end of the match.”
Krejcikova, who will play second seed Aryna Sabalenka for a place in the semi-finals after the Belarusian beat her doubles partner Elise Mertens 6-4, 6-1, did not perform press duties afterwards, but released a statement through the USTA.
“Garbiñe started to raise her level and I was expecting that,” said Krejcikova. “At the end, I was really struggling and I feel really bad right now. I don’t really know what happened, but I couldn’t breathe. I started to feel dizzy, and the whole world was shaking. It never happened to me before.”