Marion Bartoli rose from an emergency power nap to clinically halt the fairytale run of Kirsten Flipkens and reach her second Wimbledon final.
Frenchwoman Bartoli found a quiet corner in the plush members’ dressing rooms at noon and curled up for half an hour while the Centre Court crowd began to assemble.
Far from it leaving her sluggish, the shut-eye brought the best out of Bartoli, a 28-year-old who tomorrow will attempt to make up for the disappointment of her 2007 final defeat to Venus Williams when she takes on Sabine Lisicki.
“You can ask the physio in the locker room,” she said. “I slept from 12pm to 12.30pm, right before going on and you can see I was razor-sharp today.
“I felt I was just maybe a bit tired and I needed a quick nap to recover from my early-morning practice.”
Bartoli is far from the conventional tour professional. She has every shot a player needs though and condemned Flipkens to a crushing 6-1 6-2 defeat by going on the attack against the Belgian.
Defensive tactics from Flipkens reaped no dividend, apart from the £400,000 she was already guaranteed for reaching the last four.
It is easily the biggest pay cheque of a career that has only taken off this year, a decade after her junior Wimbledon and US Open titles.
Bartoli is best known for her peculiar, theatrical serving style and there can be a hint of Zorro about her between-point swishes of the racket.
She wants to be known as a Grand Slam champion first and foremost and while she suggests her private life has been troubled in recent years, she has been convinced this run in London was coming.
“I felt I deserved it,” Bartoli said. “I believe as a sportsperson you cannot always have highs and you have to go through some low moments to enjoy the highs even more.
“Even if I was having some hard times outside of the court, I was still able to go on the practice court every day and practise hard. I felt because I put that in, I should have a reward from it.”
Dad Walter, his daughter’s coach until the start of this year, was famously banished from courtside by Bartoli during a match at Wimbledon two years ago.
Former Wimbledon champion Amelie Mauresmo has stepped into the breach but Bartoli said of her father: “He’s coming for the final. Don’t worry.”
Flipkens has courageously come back from being diagnosed with blood clots in her calf, which turned out to be so serious she might not have survived had she boarded a flight to Japan for a Fed Cup match in April 2012.
Two months on the sidelines was followed by her losing funding from the Belgian tennis federation. From a career crossroads, she has discovered the form of her life.
“Flipper” to her friends, family and fans, she had the majority of the crowd on her side against Bartoli but a knee problem proved a hindrance.
Flipkens said: “I’m not going to use it as an excuse. I fell in the first set. A couple of games later I started to feel a really sharp pain.”
Bartoli gave away little and Flipkens said: “I tried my slices and she didn’t have any problem with that. I tried the drop-shot and she got it. I played a passing shot and she came to the net. I tried a lob… I tried everything, actually.
“It didn’t work out.”