<
>

No. 1 Angelique Kerber rallies from set down to reach 4th round

No. 1-ranked Angelique Kerber came back from a set and a break down to beat American Shelby Rogers 4-6, 7-6 (2), 6-4 in the third round of Wimbledon.

Kerber was the runner-up to Serena Williams at the All England Club last year. During that breakthrough season, Kerber won her first two major titles, at the Australian Open and the US Open.

This is the German left-hander's fourth trip to the fourth round at Wimbledon.

It did not come easily. After dropping the opening set, Kerber trailed 3-1 in the second before turning things around.

"It was tough to find my rhythm actually. She played very well from the first point," Kerber said. "She was hitting the balls very hard.

"In the second set, I was starting to (feel) the ball better and better. I think the key was at the end that I was fighting, and I was never giving up at the end. Doesn't matter how the score was."

Rogers had never been past the first round in two previous appearances at the grass-court Grand Slam tournament.

Also Saturday, Garbine Muguruza reached the fourth round, two years after making it all the way to the final.

The 2015 runner-up at the All England Club and 2016 French Open champion beat Sorana Cirstea 6-2, 6-2.

The 14th-seeded Muguruza played cleanly and finished with 18 winners and only 10 unforced errors. She did not drop a set this week.

Cirstea, a Romanian ranked 63rd, had made it to the third round when her previous opponent, American Bethanie Mattek-Sands, had to stop playing because she injured her knee during their match.

Caroline Wozniacki advanced to the fourth round for the sixth time, coming back to beat Anett Kontaveit of Estonia 3-6, 7-6 (3), 6-2.

The fifth-seeded Wozniacki has never reached the quarterfinals at the All England Club -- the only Grand Slam tournament in which she failed to advance to that stage.

She trailed 5-3 in the second set before winning the next two games. Kontaveit, ranked No. 38, broke Wozniacki in the next game for a 6-5 lead, but Wozniacki held and won the tiebreaker before controlling the third set.

"I felt she started to get just a little bit nervous at the end of the second set and I just went for it at that point," Wozniacki said in a television interview.

Other women's winners on Saturday include third-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska, CoCo Vandeweghe, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Magdalena Rybarikova and Petra Martic.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.