Angelique Kerber was on the brink of losing the world number one ranking on Saturday before the German scraped into the Wimbledon last 16 with a tense 4-6, 7-6 (7/2), 6-4 victory over Shelby Rogers.
In order to retain top spot in the WTA rankings, Kerber will have to feature in this year’s Wimbledon final, after losing the title match against Serena Williams last year.
The 29-year-old was on the verge of crashing out in the third round after losing the first set and falling a break down in the second against American world number 70 Shelby Rogers.
But Kerber, who won the Australian and US Opens last year, battled back to level the match in a second set tie-break before edging through in the decider.
Kerber faces Spanish 14th seed Garbine Muguruza, another former Wimbledon runner-up, for a place in the quarter-finals.
If Kerber fails to make the final she will surrender pole position to Romania's Simona Halep or Czech Karolina Pliskova.
Radwanska comes back too
Poland's ninth-seed Agnieszka Radwanska came back from a set down to beat Switzerland's Timea Bacsinszky 3-6 6-4 6-1 on Saturday and reach the last 16.
Radwanksa, runner-up in 2012, will face Russian eighth-seed Svetlana Kuznetsova in the fourth round on Monday.
Bacsinszky, mixing up the pace of her shots well to take the first set, had to call a medical time-out at the end of the second set and received heavy strapping on her thigh.
The injury, picked up when sprinting to the net, clearly troubled the Swiss in the third set which Radwanska made short work of.
(AFP and Reuters)
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