Angelique Kerber channels her great blessing and bitter curse in Serena win

On the eve of the single biggest day of her life, Angelique Kerber wasn’t even the main point of interest in her own story. Instead, she was asked 5 different tedious questions about her irrelevant relationship with Steffi Graf. Rather than talk about her imminent appearance in a slam final against the greatest player in history, she instead had to assert countless times that she never asked Graf to work with her and that, no, she was not in touch with the German. So uninteresting and unwanted are Kerber’s storylines after four years at the top of the game, some journalists felt the need to create new ones.

[STORY: Angelique Kerber upsets Serena Williams to win stunning final]

But on Saturday, that all changed. As of today she has a story - a full, flourishing non-fiction prose that will be read from mothers to children and passed down for generations to come. It will tell of the manner in which Angelique Kerber excelled herself and eked out every ounce of her talent to triumph on the big stage, taking out the tournament’s two stratospheric favourites, Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka when even one upset seemed improbable.

And that’s how it should be. It should be Kerber’s story and Kerber’s only because over the past year, Kerber has talked of changing her style. Simultaneously the great blessing and bitter curse of Kerber’s game that allows her to contest so many epic matches is her tendency to play to the opponent’s level. It’s a curse because when she faces lower ranked players across the net, she often falls to their level and leaves herself prone to upsets.

In the first round of the Australian Open, such a thing almost happened as she survived match point against Misaki Doi. But over the past year, she has been trying to change her style. Throughout her run and eventual loss to Victoria Azarenka in the Brisbane final, she asserted her need to transform her mentality and attack more frequently than ever before.

Kerber is worthy of all the headlines, then, because it’s one thing to talk about being aggressive, as the forever-defensive Caroline Wozniacki did after every point, but it’s a slightly different thing to arrive on a final of a slam for the first time and implement it there. It’s difficult enough to contest a slam title match, but it’s infinitely more of an event when standing in the shadow of Serena Williams. But under the lights of Rod Laver Arena, it’s precisely what Kerber did. She played the perfect match she could play under the circumstances, and it was a match defined by her ability to play at the perfect tempo and with the perfect tactics at the correct time.

The story should firmly be about Angelique Kerber because Instead of circling the play and waiting to see how things fared, Kerber arrived at the match and immediately made it her own. She burst into the Rod Laver Arena, breaking Williams early with brilliant returning and a geometrically glorious use of angles. But when Williams collapsed in a heap of errors, she fell back and squeezed every last error out with her. When Williams’ level rose and the only thing was to excel herself and bring out the best, she rose to the occasion and attacked accordingly.

After the match, of course, this isn’t quite how it played out. The story was back to Serena. Williams had forgotten to tell the crowd she would see them in 2017 in her speech, so that was apparently proof 2016 would be her last year. The loss marked her second straight loss at a slam, which apparently meant there was a changing of the guard and players had finally learnt the key to beating the world number one. Eventually, Williams had enough of the questions that placed her central to the story rather than her victorious opponent. Serena took a deep breath, sighed and responded to a completely unrelated question with the God’s honest truth.

“Every time I walk in this room, everyone expects me to win every single match, every single day of my life,” said Williams. “As much as I would like to be a robot, I'm not. I try.”

Sometimes, even an upset like Williams’ defeat can be described and digested in such simple terms. Williams was simply beaten to the title by a superior performance from a strong player. The great Serena Williams will return to fight another day one day very soon, but for once, this Saturday belongs only to Angelique Kerber.