Somebody up there loves Ana Ivanovic. At least, that is all poor Nathalie Dechy could possibly assume as the top seed escaped an undignified exit from Wimbledon, saved by the thickness of the net cord. No wonder Ivanovic went straight to the net at the end of an epic match, which she won 6-7, 7-6, 10-8, to kiss it like a long-lost friend.

Wimbledon had this second-round match down as a formality. So had the fans. Ivanovic walked out to a half-empty No 1 Court, but then it was her own fault: there wasn’t so much as a designer raincoat, a jazzy jacket or a snazzy sweater to look at. As she raced to a 3-1 lead, the crowd sighed and waited for the rapid finale and for Dechy, another tennis journeywoman, to be dispatched with ease by the glamorous tournament favourite.

If only somebody had read the script to Dechy. Suddenly, she was firing down huge first serves and scampering around the court and it was Ivanovic who was looking concerned, whispering to herself and shaking her fist. Dechy hauled herself back into the set and ran away with the tie-break.

Dechy, 29, joined the Tour when Ivanovic was still banging tennis balls against the walls of an empty swimming pool in Belgrade. While Ivanovic has risen to fame, riches and modelling shoots, the Frenchwoman has wandered around the lower ranks, only once reaching the later stages of a grand-slam tournament. She does not do glamour, either; blimey, she chose to live in Belgium.

In their only previous meeting, Dechy had not enjoyed the experience. “I lost 6-1, 6-1 and I didn’t see the ball the whole match,” she said. “I thought it was going to happen again. I am playing the No 1 player in the world on Court One and everything’s going so fast. I had to do something.”

Something like shock the best female player in the world to her core. It took another tie-break to separate them in the second set, but only after Ivanovic had what she admitted was the luckiest escape of her tennis life. At 5-4 down and facing a second match point, Ivanovic slapped a desperate forehand that rose too slowly for comfort. Ivanovic said that time stood still for a second as she watched the ball slap the net cord and then spiral, spinning, into the air.

“I just thought the match was over,” she said. “The ball was in the air for a couple of seconds and I thought maybe it would go out.”

It didn’t. It dropped within an inch of the net on Dechy’s side of the court. The French player watched open-mouthed; Ivanovic did not know what to think. “I was really shocked,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it. If it wasn’t for that net, I would have been booking my flight back home.”

That was still not the signal for Dechy to capitulate and, in the third set, she simply refused to give up. Each time Ivanovic gave herself a sliver of a lead, back came Dechy. In fact, she should give up tennis and apply for a job at the Thunderbirds’ International Rescue organisation, so many times did she drag herself back from the abyss, saving two match points herself as the pair slugged it out game after game in the decider. Even Dechy’s hat was against her, falling off and forcing the umpire to cancel a point that would have turned the third set in her favour.

That third set provided 18 of the most compelling games you could wish to see at Wimbledon but, eventually and sadly, Dechy cracked to allow Ivanovic, the French Open champion, one of the toughest victories of her short career, 6-7, 7-6, 10-8. Ivanovic beamed, Dechy cried and said, wiping away the tears:

“Maybe somebody in the sky helped her.” Let us see if Ivanovic needs celestial help to win the tournament.