Living dangerously in the Wimbledon sunshine, Caroline Wozniacki came within two points of defeat against Estonia's Anett Kontaveit before flipping the match and moving into the fourth round.
For all her elegance - she is dressed by Stella McCartney - the Dane is more than capable of hustling on the grass, and this was quite the turnaround after Kontaveit had twice served for a straight-sets victory.
With Serena Williams missing The Championships, she will naturally want her older sister Venus to win the title in a week's time, but if that's not going to be possible, her next preference would for her close friend Wozniacki to score her first Grand Slam. You might even go so far as to say that this was Wozniacki channelling her inner Serena as she showed plenty of mental fortitude in setting up Monday's match against America's CoCo Vandeweghe, when she will be attempting to reach the quarter-finals for the first time.
"I'm happy to escape this one," Wozniacki said after her 3-6, 7-6(3), 6-2 victory. "I don't know how I turned that around. I didn't feel myself out there [for most of the first two sets]."
On the day the junior competitions started on the outside courts around the All England Club, you could watch Wozniacki on No.1 Court for a reminder of how winning the girls' singles title is no guarantee of future success in the ladies' singles. Eleven years have passed since Wozniacki won the junior version of Wimbledon, and yet she has never gone beyond the fourth round on these lawns, having lost at that stage on five occasions. And for a good while during this match, it appeared as though Wozniacki wouldn't even progress into the second week. But with this win, Wozniacki has given herself a sixth opportunity to try to gain membership of Wimbledon's Last Eight Club.
Wozniacki is the most successful player of this generation without a senior Grand Slam title
Wozniacki's Wimbledon results are in contrast to her record at the other majors, as she has twice played in a US Open final, and is also a former Australian Open semi-finalist and Roland Garros quarter-finalist. In the absence of Serena, opportunities abound for players of Wozniacki's standing. Wozniacki is the most successful player of this generation without a senior Grand Slam title. No one in the history of the women's game has won more singles titles - she has 25 - without bagging a major along the way (the next highest is Pam Shriver with 21), while she was once the alpha female of this sport, spending 67 weeks at the top of the rankings.
But it's been a while since anyone won both the girls' and ladies' singles titles at the All England Club: Amelie Mauresmo was the last to do so, the Frenchwoman taking the junior prize in 1996 and then the Venus Rosewater Dish a decade later.
For a guide to how The Championships might play out, you are much better off looking at recent results, and Wozniacki had lost to the same opponent at last year's Nottingham grass-court tournament. From that standpoint, it wouldn't have been a surprise if Wozniacki had lost here, and for a time it certainly appeared as though that was going to happen. Wozniacki, though, turned this around.
