Laura Robson, the first British woman since Sam Smith in 1998 to reach the fourth round at Wimbledon, is having quite a love affair with her public.
"We're living it together," she said of the crowd support after beating Marina Duque-Marino in two sets on Friday; and, as chants of "Laura! Laura!" drifted above Court Two on a warm Saturday afternoon to acclaim her much tougher 1-6, 7-5, 6-3 victory over the New Zealander Marina Erakovic in the third round, she paid tribute to them again."The crowd were amazing," she said. "Honestly, totally amazing. Definitely couldn't have done it without them. I'm really excited. This is only my second time in the fourth round of a slam. Tomorrow? Rest, take it easy, hit for an hour or so, and just recover."
Simple. Uncomplicated. And very Laura. She is as calm a teenager – and the only one inside the top 50 – as there can be in the tournament.
There is no kind way to put this: Erakovic went to pieces when it mattered.
Dominant at the start, she was shattered at the end, although still trying hard. But Robson, after a struggle, found her A game and broke her down.
Erakovic caught Robson flat-footed in the first set, and Robson found getting a foothold in any sense difficult. At 15-40 and already a game down at the start, she slipped on the same court, but not the same piece of turf, and with the same sideways movement that did for Maria Sharapova when she fell and kept on tumbling all the way out of the tournament. So, after only five minutes, Robson was 2-0 down and wary of the surface. That was a handicap she could have done without before the race really got going. She knew there was a danger that the match could get away from her if she did not find a rhythm quickly.
Her response, as ever, was to let the shots go, but they were not always finding their intended spot at the other end, as she went for the lines in the hope of shocking Erakovic with her raw power. Instead it was the New Zealander who was loading up more effectively in a tense, nervous start.
Erakovic came to the match with a serve that would either fire or miss badly: 18 aces and 12 double faults.
She has done so well to come back from the 700s in the rankings after coping with a hip injury that kept her out for nearly a year. She has worked that down to No71 and, although way outside the Wimbledon seedings, was widely considered a dangerous outsider.
She beat Robson in three tough sets on the grass of Birmingham last year, their only meeting, and they are friends on the Tour, none of which counted on Saturday.
Against all her instincts, Robson needed to slow the fight, take some of the momentum out of it. At 4-1 down and serving after only a quarter of an hour, she was struggling to make a contest of it, and dropped serve again, her loose forehand letting her down again.
Inside 20 minutes, Erakovic was 5-1 up and serving for the set. Two minutes later, it was hers. This was high-speed carnage.
But, as expected, Robson dug in hard in the second. There were a few scraps of encouragement, including the sight of Erakovic also hitting the turf a couple of times. She stayed in the fight by holding to trail 5-4 and then looked for a chink of doubt in her opponent as she served for a place in the fourth round.
With the crowd behind her on every point, she scrambled two break points.
The first she wasted with an awkward return of a second serve that sailed long. But she made no mistake putting away the second chance with a belting double-fisted backhand to level and give herself a first proper opportunity.
If Robson could take it into a third set, the pressure would be back on Erakovic after coming so close to wrapping it up. A third Robson ace took her to 40-15. At 40-30, Erakovic gambled on a drop shot but Robson, not the greatest of movers, hurtled in and dinked it away to go 6-5 up.
When Erakovic double-faulted to hand the set to Robson, the mood lifted markedly in the Londoner's favour. It was now a one-set shootout and the complexion of the contest had changed dramatically.
Robson raced to 2-0, saved three break points to hold, and the match was hers to lose. It was Erakovic whose game now disintegrated as her serve, her forehand and even her drop shots bore little fruit. Robson's movement going forward to tidy up the short stuff was a revelation.
Even a dropped serve in the fifth game did no more than delay her progress.
She had match point at 5-2 and 30-40, but Erakovic held, tigerishly, with her big serve.
Serving for the match, Robson had ball-toss problems again, but calmed her nerves long enough to secure the result with a trademark forehand down the line – and moving her foot to get perfect position. Change is on the way
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