Top 10 of '18, No. 3: Halep survives Kerber in Australian Open semis

Click here to read Steve's entire countdown of the Best Matches of 2018.

HIGHLIGHTS: Simona Halep d. Angelique Kerber, Australian Open semifinals, 6-3, 4-6, 9-7​

“I was fighting until the last point,” Angelique Kerber told reporters in the Australian Open interview room.

A few minutes later, Simona Halep walked—a little gingerly—into that same interview room, and told those same reporters exactly the same thing: “I was fighting until the last point.”

At the time, in late-January, I wrote that we would be lucky to see a better fight all year than Halep’s 6-3, 4-6, 9-7 win over Kerber in the Aussie Open semifinals. Over the next 10 months, only two matches would top it.

Halep and Kerber are made to create epics together. Their first meeting, at a 50K event in St. Raphael in 2009, went the distance, with Halep winning 7-5 in the third set. Halep also beat Kerber, 6-4 in the third at the Rogers Cup, in one of the best matches of 2015. The following year, in one of the best matches of 2016, Kerber turned the tables in two tight sets at Wimbledon. In many ways, these two are mirror images, as players and personalities. One is a righty, the other a lefty, but both are natural-born defenders who can also turn into shot-makers when needed; and both are natural-born fighters who can also turn inconsolably negative on the wrong day.

This was not that day for either woman.

Through its first 24 games and 90 minutes, Halep vs. Kerber was as suspenseful and entertaining as any fan could have hoped. Kerber started slowly, and Halep went up a set and 3-1 in the second. But the fans in Rod Laver Arena got behind Kerber as she warmed to her task in the second set. By the start of the third, the German and the Romanian may have been a little too warm on this sunny summer day. At 1-1, Halep and Kerber each looked exhausted; they struggled to move during points, and were left doubled-over after they ended. Somehow, the the best way still yet to come from both women.

Halep and Kerber would finish with the most furious, glorious 50 minutes of the 2018 season. It began with Halep serving for the match at 5-3 in the third. After a 26-shot, full-tilt, full-roar, corner-to-corner rally, Kerber broke with a crosscourt backhand that she reflexed at an impossibly acute angle. When the ball went for a winner, Kerber dropped to her knees; in that moment, it was unclear if she could have swung the racquet one more time.

Yet for the next seven games, with a spot in a Grand Slam final on the line, Halep and Kerber continued to run each other from sideline to sideline. They punched and counterpunched. They grunted in aggression and desperation. They saved and held match points. They stared at their player boxes in disbelief, and raged at their coaches in frustration. But they also fought off that frustration, which has overwhelmed each of them in the past. Most of all, Halep and Kerber rose to each other’s level.

And then, from 7-7 on, Halep rose a little higher. After squandering a 5-3 lead and two match points, she gestured angrily toward her coach, Darren Cahill, until he finally had to tell her to just get on with it. By that stage, the match had become a referendum on Halep’s ability to close out a big match. A referendum on whether, after squandering a lead in the French Open final in 2017, she could avoid squandering another one here.

At the start of 2018, Halep said she was determined to be more “courageous” in these situations. This time, rather than let her frustration distract her, she channeled it into a ruthlessly aggressive game—she would finish with 50 winners. From the first swing of a rally to the last, Halep pounded the ball with a controlled fury and put Kerber on her heels. Kerber held off the Halep storm for as long as she could, and she saved one more match point at 7-8, but she couldn’t save a second.

“It’s my dream to win a Grand Slam title,” Halep said after this victory, as she looked forward to a final with Caroline Wozniacki two days later. “If it’s not going to happen Saturday, I will stay strong, and I will keep thinking and dreaming for others.”

It didn’t happen that Saturday, but Halep kept dreaming, and eventually fulfilled that dream. She knew that if she could survive Kerber in this classic, she could survive anything.