Wimbledon Women’s update

Laura Robson became the first British woman since 1998 to reach the 4th round at Wimbledon when coming back from the dead to beat Marina Erakovic on Saturday and is now a 33/1 chance with Coral to go all the way and lift the Venus Rosewater Dish.

The new darling of SW19, 125/1 at the start of the tournament, showed that she is a lot more than just a pretty face and an endearing giggle when suddenly overcoming understandable nerves to blast her way to a victory over Erakovic that seemed so unlikely when her Kiwi pal was 6-1, 5-3 up and serving for the match.

Robson is looking on this second Wimbledon week as “bonus territory” and is taking each game as it comes, but if she refuses to look further ahead, then punters will do it for her as they study her potential pathway to a dream final next weekend.

First up on Monday will be the big-serving Estonian Kaia Kanepi, who enjoyed a much smoother passage through to Round 4 with a commanding straight sets win over the unseeded American, Alison Riske. Kanepi is eight places below Robson in the world rankings, so on paper this looks another likely success for the 19-year-old Londoner, but her opponent did get into the top 16 last summer and has reached three Grand Slam quarter-finals, so this is hardly a straightforward exercise.

Then, if Robson can get through that – bang – it’s Serena Williams in the quarter finals and she would have to raise her game to another level and hope that the five-times Wimbledon champion has a rare off day to progress any further. Williams started the tournament as Coral’s 2/5 favourite and is now 2/9 as main rivals have fallen by the wayside.

But if, if, if Robson can beat Williams, then her semi-final opponent might well be either Agnieska Radwanska or Li Na, the next highest seeds left in her half of the draw – and she has taken both their scalps already, Na in last year’s US Open and Radwanska in this year’s Madrid Open.

Then…no, that’s too much dreaming. First things first and Coral actually make Kanepi slight favourite to beat her tomorrow. Bearing in mind the rising pressure on our Laura, the smart play might be to back Kanepi to win the first set at 8/11 and Robson the second set (when in theory her nerves will have settled) at evens. Then the baying Wimbledon Court One crowd might just swing it for their new heroine – Coral make Robson 10/3 to win in three sets.

Written by Jon Freeman