WORLD number one Ashleigh Barty crushed fellow Australian Ajla Tomljanovic on Tuesday to reach the Wimbledon semi-finals for the first time.
Barty, 25, won 6-1 6-3 and will play Angelique Kerber in the last four.
Kerber, the 2018 Wimbledon champion, progressed after a convincing 6-2 6-3 win over Karolina Muchova.
Aryna Sabalenka will take on Karolina Pliskova in Thursday’s other semi-final after wins over Ons Jabeur and Viktorija Golubic respectively.
It means that at the last four Grand Slams, including Wimbledon, the 16 semi-final places have been taken by 16 different players.
Barty, the 2019 French Open champion, was no match for compatriot Tomljanovic, cruising through the opening set as she won six games in a row, three of which were to love.
But Tomljanovic appeared stronger in the second set, breaking Barty in the opening game, although she did not hit her second winner until the sixth game when she seemed set to launch a fightback.
She broke Barty again in the seventh but Barty soon stormed home, taking victory on her second match point with an ace – her fifth of the match.
Barty will meet Kerber for the fifth time in their semi-final, after the German’s dominant win over Czech Muchova.
Kerber, the only previous winner left in the women’s draw, wrapped up the first set with ease and had the composure to see off the Muchova’s spirited effort in the second.
It marked her 10th consecutive win on grass, having won the Bad Homburg Open in June.
Sabalenka reached her maiden Grand Slam semi-final with a 6-4 6-3 win over Tunisia’s Jabeur – the first Arab woman to reach the last eight at the All England Club.
Before Tuesday’s match, both Sabalenka and Jabeur had won a Tour-leading 33 matches in 2021, and little could separate them in the early exchanges.
Jabeur – who defeated Grand Slam champions Venus Williams, Garbine Muguruza and Iga Swiatek on her march to the last eight – held break point in a five-minute opening game, but could not take her chance, and Sabalenka held with a pacy serve down the middle that her opponent could not return in.
The next eight games went with serve, the big-hitting Sabalenka notching a 122mph effort, before she started to assert her dominance in the 10th.
Sabalenka crucially broke Jabeur in the eighth, before saving a break point and clinching the win on her first match point with a backhand down the line.
She will face eighth seed Pliskova, who reached the Wimbledon last four for the first time with a 6-2 6-2 victory over Switzerland’s Golubic.
BBC Sport
Comments are closed.