Wimbledon semi-final live: Angelique Kerber standing between Ash Barty and first SW19 final

Australian world number one Ash Barty is up against three-time major champion Angelique Kerber in the Wimbledon semi-finals from 10:30pm AEST.

We’ll be running a live blog here one hour before the match starts.

Follow live, look back at their paths through the tournament and check out their history leading up to this match below.

Live score

Wimbledon 2021 stats

Both Barty and Kerber had some early wobbles before righting the ship, as all champions do.

The Queenslander was pushed to three sets and a tie-break in the first round by Carla Suarez Navarro, before starting with a surprisingly high error rate in round two against unheralded Russian Anna Blinkova, although she won through in straight sets.

She has looked every bit the world number one since then, with straight-sets wins against Katerina Siniakova, 14th seed Barbora Krecjikova and fellow Aussie Ajla Tomljanovic.

Kerber, meanwhile, stormed past Croatia’s Nina Stojanovic 6-4, 6-3 to open her tournament before a three-hour, 20-minute slog against Spain’s Sara Sorribes Tormo. That was followed by another three-setter against Aliaksandra Sasnovich, albeit in half the time of her previous match.

The 33-year-old then beat 20th seed Coco Gauff and 19th seed Karolina Muchova, who beat Barty in this year’s Australian Open quarter-final.

Kerber has spent almost an hour more on court than Barty in the past week-and-a-half, with eight hours and 29 minutes to 7:32 for the Aussie.

Head to head

Barty and Kerber have played four WTA matches leading up to this and the head to head is tied at 2-2, although Kerber got one extra win at the 2019 Hopman Cup, which often is not taken quite as seriously as other tournaments.

• January 2019 — Hopman Cup: Kerber won 6-4, 6-4
• September 2018 — Wuhan Open: Barty won 7-5, 6-1
• January 2018 — Sydney International: Kerber won 6-4, 6-4
• October 2017 — WTA Elite Trophy: Barty won 6-3, 6-4
• January 2017 — Brisbane International: Kerber won 6-3, 2-6, 6-3

Strangely enough, Kerber has won all three matches in Australia, including the Sydney final in 2018, while Barty’s wins were both late-season victories in China.

This pair have never met on grass, with all four of those prior matches on hard courts either at the start of the year or very late in the season.

Wimbledon and grand slam records

Barty is enjoying a career-best outing at Wimbledon this year, while Kerber has done it all before.

Barty had only ever gone as far as the fourth round at the grass-court slam, in 2019, before this year.

The German won her third major title at SW19 in 2018 after falling short against Serena Williams in the 2016 final. But this is her first trip past the fourth round in a major since that 2018 win.

Meanwhile, Barty has won the 2019 French Open, reached the semis of the 2020 Australian Open and made the quarters in Melbourne in 2019 and 2021 in that time.

Kerber has three slams to her name — 2018 Wimbledon, 2016 US and 2016 Australian Open — and Barty has one — the 2019 Roland Garros.