Sabine Lisicki, the smiling darling of the Centre Court, has become Wimbledon's favorite German, adopted as an honorary Brit just like Steffi Graf and Boris Becker before her.

But a crippling ankle injury in 2010 as well as a bizarre allergy to grass almost conspired to wreck her dream of ever featuring in a Wimbledon final.

The injury, which kept her off tour for five months and sent her world ranking plummeting to 218, left her needing "to learn to walk again".