FRENCH 15th seed Marion Bartoli reached the Wimbledon semi-finals on Tuesday (July 2) with a 6-4, 7-5 win over Sloane Stephens, the 17th-seeded American, despite being booed by the All England Club crowd.
Bartoli, the 2007 Wimbledon runner-up to Venus Williams, will face Belgium’s Kirsten Flipkens, who beat 2011 champion Petra Kvitova 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 for a place in the final.
But she fell foul of the fans on the 11,000-seater Court One bowl when she demanded that play be stopped when she was leading 5-4, 40-40 with Stephens serving as light rain began to fall.
When they resumed after two and a half hours, Stephens quickly dropped the first set and slipped 2-0 down in the second, losing the first nine points as the crowd, convinced that Bartoli’s complaints over the state of the court had been unjustified, jeered following their lengthy wait.
“I don’t get why the crowd was against me,” said the 28-year-old Bartoli.
“The courts are slippy even when they are dry but when they are wet they can be dangerous.
“It was just a precaution. I wanted to make sure I didn’t get hurt. I didn’t want to come off for any other reason.”
The Frenchwoman was still being booed before Stephens broke back for 2-1.
In a low-quality second set, played out in a chilly, half-full stadium, there were eight breaks of serve in the first nine games.
Until she held for 5-5, the 20-year-old American had won just one of 17 points on serve.
But she was unable to avoid being broken again in the crucial 12th game with the 21 winners she hit to Bartoli’s six unable to save her.
