Former champion Simona Halep marked her return to the Centre Court on Monday with a scintillating performance to thrash fourth-seeded Spaniard Paula Badosa 6-1, 6-2 and reach the Wimbledon quarter finals.
Halep smashed 17 winners, kept a tab on her errors and broke Badosa’s serve five times to close out the victory in an hour. She will take on American Amanda Anisimova in the quarters.
Harmony Tan’s fairytale Wimbledon debut came to an end when the Frenchwoman was beaten 6-2, 6-3 by 20-year-old Anisimova.
World No. 115 Tan, who stunned Serena Williams in a late-night epic on Day II, backed up that win with two more impressive performances. But her wily game was no match for 20th seed Anisimova whose powerful baseline game got the job done in 74 minutes.
To Ajla’s credit
Ajla Tomljanovic became the first Australian woman in more than two decades to reach back-to-back Wimbledon quarter finals when she wore down Alize Cornet in an electrifying 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 contest.
With Cornet leading 4-2 in the opening set, the players embarked on a sequence of six games that went against serve.
Although the 32-year-old Frenchwoman managed to win the first set during that run, it set a trend in a match which featured 16 breaks, with Tomljanovic coming out on top of that count 9-7.
None of them were as important as the final game, however. After Cornet, who had ended world No.1 Iga Swiatek’s remarkable 37-match winning streak in the previous round, saved Tomljanovic’s first two match points, the players brought the Court Two crowd to their feet in a 26-shot rally.
The 44th-ranked Tomljanovic will next face Kazakh 17th seed Elena Rybakina who defeated Petra Martic of Croatia 7-5, 6-3 victory.
Sania in semis
Sania Mirza and her Croatian partner Mate Pavic reached the mixed doubles semi-final at Wimbledon on Monday.
The sixth-seeded pair defeated the fourth-seeded Canadian-Australian duo of Gabriela Dabrowski and John Peers 6-4, 3-6, 7-5 in the quarter-final match that lasted one hour and 41 minutes.
