Kerber stuns Azarenka to advance to Aussie Open semis

Victoria Azarenka's Australian Open title hopes were snuffed out Wednesday by German No. 7 seed Angelique Kerber, who proved the steadier and mentally tougher player in wresting away a rollercoaster quarterfinal match, 6-3, 7-5.

Though she came in ranked higher than the 14th-seeded Azarenka, Kerber was a considerable underdog. She'd never beaten Azarenka in six attempts, and had won just two of 14 sets in those matches. Azarenka entered the tournament the prohibitive favorite to emerge from her half of the draw, and after romping to a title at the tuneup in Brisbane, she'd blown away her competition on the way to the quarters - she'd not only not dropped a set in 2016, she'd yet to even lose more than four games in a set. She was cruising toward the finals.

But two matches short, she ran up against an obstacle that simply would not give way. Kerber stubbornly held her ground on the baseline right from the jump, crouching down all the way to the plexicushion to dig out low balls on the rise and refusing to be pushed back. She didn't hit with a ton of pace, but her placement was consistently bothersome to her opponent; she kept the ball deep, made good use of angles, and pounced all over Azarenka's slow-rolling second serves.

Azarenka, meanwhile, looked rattled by the stiff test she was facing after tearing through her first four opponents like tissue paper. She littered the court with loose errors off the ground, noticeably lost faith in her forehand, dumped a couple ill-timed drop shots into net, and never quite seemed to find any sort of groove. She committed 33 unforced errors to Kerber's 16, won just 38 percent of her second-serve points, and got broken six times.

Kerber raced out to a 4-0 lead in the first set, and though Azarenka clawed out three straight games in response to make things interesting, the mountain proved too tall to climb, and a sailing forehand put Kerber a set away from just her first semifinal in Melbourne.

The second set is where things got strange. Azarenka came out gunning, plainly irked by her sloppy play in the first. She broke Kerber right off the bat, consolidated, then held through until breaking again to go up 5-2. She served for the set, raced to a 40-0 lead, and it all looked academic, But then, out of nowhere, a back-against-the-wall Kerber started swinging freely and connecting. She erased all three set points, two with scalding backhand winners, and then watched Azarenka double-fault on break point.

After a Kerber hold, Azarenka had another chance to serve it out, and earned herself another two set points. Once again, with Kerber getting ultra- aggressive, Azarenka couldn't close. She missed wide on a routine backhand, and flubbed a would-be put-away at net that Kerber easily knocked back for a winning pass, clinching another break to get back on serve.

From there, Azarenka seemed to lose her will and her belief. Kerber's relentless depth continued to force misses, and she finally closed out the match by breaking Azarenka a third straight time.

"I can't actually describe it," said Kerber, who's through to her first major semi since the 2012 US Open. "I was 0-6 against her. I was saying, 'Play like you do in practice, just believe it.' I'm so happy."

The 28-year-old will have a great chance to advance to her first career Grand Slam final, as she'll next face unseeded upstart Johanna Konta.