Marion out, bring on Maria!

She said her next match, bound to be staged on the Arthur Ashe Stadium, would be special. ‘‘It’s definitely going to be one of the biggest matches in my career but hopefully I’ll have the crowd there again. I mean, it’s great. It’s the biggest stadium in all the grand slams, so I’m actually very excited.’’

Would she be under pressure? ‘‘She’s number one seed, so I still have nothing to lose if I’m going to play her. There’s obviously no pressure on me. I don’t think a lot of people expect me to win.’’

Her coach thought otherwise. ‘‘We’ve got a good opportunity, a good chance’’, John Farrington said. ‘‘We do have a gameplan for Maria. Sania can do extremely well. Maria hits with a lot of pace, and so Sania doesn’t need to generate pace on her own.’’

She needed to do that today, against the slow-paced Bartoli, in a match marked by poor serves from both players. That was the only similarity, though, as Sania demonstrated her far superior strokeplay. Bartoli rarely looked like winning; Sania, though, often gave the impression that she could lose the match.

Lapses in concentration, a remarkably high number of unforced errors and that terrible serve could have done her in. But her strengths, too, were present in glorious abundance. Rousing winners, exquisite lobs, deft volleys and a tennis brain that sniffed the opportunity in Bartoli’s leg injury.

Sitting up in the stands, her father Imran Mirza was basking in the crowd’s applause. ‘‘A lot of people didn’t know who she was and when she started dishing out those backhands I could hear them asking each other, ‘Who is this girl? Where’s she from?’’’.

He said his daughter believed, post-match, that her game was improving. ‘‘She’s feeling fit, she’s mentally on a high. She knows there are inconsistencies in her game but that’s the way tennis goes.’’

And what inconsistencies! Sania had 49 unforced errors, compared to Bartoli’s 14, and 46 winners, where her opponent had just four.

He said she showed a lot of character in coming through a difficult third round match. ‘‘There were moments when she did not execute what she was told but there many moments when she did exactly as she was asked to. She is still not playing at her best. That talks a lot about her character. If all things come together, it will be much easier.’’