Kerber beats Williams for her 1st Grand Slam title

The favourite to win the tournament, Williams – 21-time Grand Slam champion – was the favourite.

Kerber, a 28-year-old left-hander, was playing the first Grand Slam final of her career and Williams had won the pair’s last four meetings, all of them in straight sets.

Raising her intensity and stalking Kerber’s suspect second serve, Williams broke back for 3-3 with a scorching backhand return. And even after Serena got the break back to bring the set to 2-2, Kerber rattled off the next three games to take a commanding 5-2 lead, eventually closing it out 6-4 to capture the title.

Completing a 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 victory after two hours and eight minutes to claim her first major title, Kerber lay outstretched in disbelief on Rod Laver Arena, having sealed one of the biggest shocks in Melbourne.

Angelique Kerber said it feels like a second coming in her career after she won her first Grand Slam title at the Australian Open, and also learned an important lesson: just “go for it”.

At a luncheon earlier in the week, Court, 73, said, “I think anyone who beats my record deserves to win it. But remember, I always had Billie Jean King, Chris Evert had Martina Navratilova to beat and then Steffi Graf came in. She told me after that she’s really happy for me and that I really deserved it”, Kerber said.

“That’s how I am, a little bit insane, you know”, she said “I really know and I have confidence when I play my dropshots”. This left Williams to lament the concession of her first set in this year’s championships.

Kerber’s first Grand Slam final ended happily for her, after she was almost knocked out in the first round.

World Number One Serena Williams was looking to defend her title against Angelique Kerber. Rattled, Serena began cleaning up her act to hold serve in the first game of the second set. “Really, it is a special moment for me”.

They are the first brothers to reach the finals in the men’s singles and doubles at a Grand Slam event in the Open era.

As she has done so many times in the past, Williams fought back and when she levelled the match, it looked as if she would race through the third.

En route to the final Kerber beat two-time champion Victoria Azarenka to signal she meant business, and she made the most of an error-strewn performance by Williams.

Despite a rash of uncharacteristic unforced errors, Williams pushed Kerber all the way. “So congratulations to everything you’ve already done”. I think it’s going in the right direction.

“These have been the best two weeks of my life”. I think maybe in the past I didn’t as much.

The American has been in imperious form at the season’s opening Slam, easily dispatching the likes of Maria Sharapova and Agnieszka Radwanska, but seventh seed Kerber believes she can spring a surprise.

Her loss in this year’s final has denied the American a place alongside Graf as the most successful women’s player in nearly half a century of professional tennis.

The trend was started by another German, Boris Becker, who jumped in the Yarra after winning the Australian Open in 1991, and continued by American Jim Courier the following year.