Eugenie Bouchard has been here before, and it shows.
Playing at the humid, covered Centre Court at the All England Club and trailing her opponent 5-3 in the second set, Bouchard won four straight games Monday to beat France's Alize Cornet 7-6 (5), 7-5 and advance to the quarter-finals at Wimbledon.
With Cornet serving for the set, Bouchard didn't panic and broke her opponent twice, including on match point. Though only 20 years old, the experience from making the semifinals of both the Australian Open and French Open earlier this year is paying dividends.
'I'm proud that I stayed in it even though I was kind of playing catch-up,' Bouchard said after the match. 'I always felt right there, trying to put pressure [on] all the time.'
Bouchard, the No. 13 seed from Westmount, Que., will next play the winner of a match pushed back to Tuesday between fifth seed Maria Sharapova and ninth seed Angelique Kerber of Germany.
Sharapova defeated Bouchard in the French Open semifinal before going on to win the tournament.
Bouchard has been a winner at the All England Club before, taking the 2012 junior women's title. Conditions were different for Monday's match, which was interrupted by rain before the movable roof over Centre Court closed.
The 20-year-old Canadian made the most of her return when play resumed, coming back from a 3-2 deficit to win the first set. A bigger comeback in the second allowed her to improve her Grand Slam record to 14-2.
'I'm really proud of how I fought,' Bouchard said. 'It was not an easy match. She's a good player and gets a lot of balls back.
'I tried to finish off the points, which I managed. It was my first time under the famous roof. It's quite humid, not a lot of air circulating.
'Conditions were tough but they were the same for both of us.'
Bouchard won the opening set after nearly an hour of play with a backhand winner in the tiebreaker.
She went down 4-2 and later 5-3 in the second set, but calmly levelled for 5-all, breaking when Cornet fired a forehand wide.
'We had some tough points, she has good wheels,' Bouchard said. 'I had to really try and finish off the point. That made for some really tough, physical points. It's definitely the most physical match I've played I think this tournament.
'She's a good fighter, too. We were really just battling.'
Cornet, seeded 25th, was looking to pull off another upset after stunning five-time Wimbledon champ Serena Williams in her previous match.
Bouchard held serve to go up 6-5 and won the tight concluding game with another break of Cornet, advancing on the first match point when Cornet hit her forehand long.
'I'm very excited, but I need to stay focused,' said Bouchard, who is the first Canadian in the Open era to reach the quarter-finals at Wimbledon in singles play. 'It can only be one match at a time. I need to keep from being distracted.
'This what I've world so hard for. I want to take another step, I want to keep going.'
Men's eighth seed Milos Raonic, Thornhill, Ont, will play for the quarter-finals on Tuesday against Japan's 10th seed Kei Nishikori, who defeated Simone Bolelli of 3-6, 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (4), 6-4. 3 Czechs reach women's quarters
Former No.1 Caroline Wozniacki was put out of the tournament after losing 6-2, 7-5 to unseeded Barbora Zahlavova Strycova of the Czech Republic in the fourth round.
The 43-ranked Zahlavova Strycova has beaten seeded players in three consecutive matches.
She will next play compatriot and Petra Kvitova, who drubbed Shuai Peng of China 6-3, 6-2.
No. 22 Ekaterina Makarova of Russia scored a mild upset, defeating No. 4. Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland, 6-3, 6-0.
Makarova set up a date with No. 23 Czech player Lucie Safarova, who made it back to the quarter-finals of a major for the first time in seven years after a 6-0, 6-2 victory over countrywoman Tereza Smitkova.
Of those four quarter-finalists, only the 2011 Wimbledon champion Kvitova has ever reached a Grand Slam semifinal.
Last year's Wimbledon runner-up, Sabine Lisicki of Germany, reached the fourth round by beating 2008 French Open champion Ana Ivanovic 6-4, 3-6, 6-1 in a match that began two days earlier.
The second set was at 1-all Saturday night when the match was suspended because of darkness.
Lisicki lost to since retired Marion Bartoli in the 2013 final.
She next faces 65th-ranked Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan, who moved on when Madison Keys of the United States was forced to pull out from their uncompleted third-round match with a thigh injury.
'I came in this morning and I had lots of tape on and I tried,' the 30th-ranked Keys said. 'I had so much tape on me I could barely walk. It just wasn't happening.'
Keys picked up the injury on Saturday when her match with Shvedova was suspended by darkness. They were due to resume play on Monday, with the Kazakhstan player leading 7-6 (7), 6-6. Murray, Djokovic perennial quarter-finalists
Defending champion Andy Murray moved into the Wimbledon quarters for the seventh year in a row, beating 20th-seeded Kevin Anderson of South Africa 6-4, 6-3, 7-6 (6).
The match finished with the Centre Court roof shut after a brief rain delay early in the second set.
The third-seeded Murray has won all 12 sets he's played in the tournament this year, dropping 32 games. His All England Club winning streak is 17 matches, including the run to a gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics.
In 2013, Murray became the first British man in 77 years to win Wimbledon. Anderson was trying to reach his first Grand Slam quarter-final. He would have been the first man from South Africa to get to Wimbledon's quarterfinals since Wayne Ferreira in 1994.
Murray will take on No. 11 seed Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria, who prevailed 6-4, 7-6 (6), 6-2 over Argentina's Leonardo Mayer.
Novak Djokovic, beaten by Murray in last year's final, is on to the quarters at All England Club for a sixth consecutive time.
The Serbian defeated Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France 6-4, 6-4, 7-6 (5) for his 20th consecutive appearance in the quarters at a Grand Slam event.
Marin Cilic of Croatia will be Djokovic's next opponent after setting aside France's Jeremy Chardy, 7-6 (8), 6-4, 6-4.
Australian Open champion Stan Wawrinka kept up his bid for a second Grand Slam singles title when he advanced to the fourth round with a 6-3, 6-3, 6-4 win over Uzbekistan's Denis Istomin.
The fifth-seeded Wawrinka, who had 12 aces in the match, will play either Feliciano Lopez or John Isner in the next round.
The Swiss player broke Istomin four times in five break-point chances and saved all three break points against him in the 1 hour, 27-minute match.
Wawrinka next challenges 19th seed Feliciano Lopez of Spain.
Lopez beat the last American singles player at Wimbledon, ninth-seeded John Isner, 6-7 (8), 7-6 (6), 7-6 (3), 7-5.
Lopez hit 34 aces Monday and saved the only two break points he faced.
A three-time quarter-finalist at Wimbledon, Lopez is back in the fourth round for the first time since 2011.
With files from The Associated Press
Post By http://www.cbc.ca/sports/tennis/wimbledon-eugenie-bouchard-advances-to-quarter-finals-1.2691886
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