Wimbledon 2018: Angelique Kerber and Jelena Ostapenko through as some normality is restored to women's draw

The last remaining top ten women’s seed was gone shortly before Wimbledon’s sun-baked punters had begun patiently queuing for their first Pimm’s of the day. Karolína Plíšková has waited her entire career to reach the second week of Wimbledon but was out by Monday lunchtime, dispatched in straight sets by Kiki Bertens. Another ladies’ singles match, another upset.

But after Bertens’ unexpectedly routine 6-3, 7-6 (1) victory, some order was finally resorted to the women’s singles after a week of startling results. The other seven fourth round matches progressed largely as expected, and the six remaining seeds from the 32 who entered this Championships all remain alive to fight another day.

The highest ranked of these is 2016 finalist Angelique Kerber, through to her fourth Wimbledon quarter-final in seven years after she curtailed the promising run of Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic. In doing so Kerber ended a dismal streak of three straight-sets defeats by the 21-year-old: consider her 6-3, 7-5 victory a score well and truly settled.

“It was not so easy, especially because I know she's playing very well on grass,” Kerber commented afterwards. “She has always beaten me in the top matches. So today I was just trying to be aggressive. She played well even when she was down and came back towards the end, so I am happy to have gone through in two sets.”

Kerber is now the highest ranked woman left in the tournament and the second favourite to lift the Venus Rosewater Dish on Saturday behind only Serena Williams, who eased past qualifier Evgeniya Rodina in straight sets. But the former Australian and US Open champion was at great pains to insist after her victory that she is not getting carried away by the seemingly wide-open draw.

“I am not yet feeling the pressure because I am not looking at the seeding or who is left or not,” she added. “I’m just looking forward for my next match. For every single day that I'm here trying to do my best. This is all I'm focusing on.”

Hers is a markedly different approach to Jeļena Ostapenko’s, the big-hitting 2017 French Open champion who plays every point as though her life depends on it. The 21-year-old found herself in a real spot of bother in her match against the red-hot Aliaksandra Sasnovich: trailing 5-2, playing poorly and in trouble with the chair umpire Julie Kjendlie for receiving coaching. Ostapenko was visibly disgusted by the ticking-off, and responded in the only way she knew how.

Returning to the baseline with a face like thunder, Ostapenko entered a simply unplayable patch of form. She went on to win the next eight points in a row before squeezing through the ensuing tiebreak, and crushed Sasnovich in the second set, winning all six games to prevail 7-6 (4), 6-0.

Appearing for her press conference with a decidedly more relaxed demeanour, Ostapenko explained what had caused the turnaround. “Actually that code violation made me even more motivated and angry,” she explained simply. “So I just started to play better.” It would appear her temper mirrors her famously unyielding playing style.

Ostapenko will play the unseeded Dominika Cibulková in the next round — “a very aggressive player, moving well with a good forehand”, in the Latvian's own words — who saw off Hsieh Su-wei in controversial circumstances on Court 14.

As Hsieh served at 0-30 in the tenth game of the first set, Cibulkova blasted a return deep into court and immediately challenged the linesman's call of out, prompting Hawkeye to show it had indeed been in. The umpire awarded the point to Cibulkova, despite Hsieh managing to scramble the return back over the net. Both Hsieh’s protests and the crowd’s chants of ‘replay the point’ were ignored, with the Slovakian eventually winning the match 6-4, 6-1.

After the match, Cibulkova’s sympathy was in short supply. “The right decision was, of course, to keep the decision,” she argued. “This happened to me so many times that I had exact the same point, and the point was given to the other player. I had no sympathy because it's just about the chair umpire.”

Elsewhere, there was a milestone victory for No. 13 seed Julia Görges, who eased past Donna Vekic. The German — the third highest ranked player left in the draw — has never before made it beyond the fourth round of a Grand Slam and had lost in the first round of Wimbledon for the past five years, but won 6-3, 6-2 and will play Bertens for a place in the final four.

Rising star Daria Kasatkina, seeded one place below Görges, will play Kerber after battling back to beat Alison Van Uytvanck 6-7 (6), 6-3, 6-2. And Italy’s Camila Giorgi has been handed the unenviable task of playing Williams after she ended the run of Ekaterina Makarova, who had beaten Caroline Wozniacki and Lucie Šafářová in the preceding rounds.

Not that Giorgi has too much idea what to expect when she takes on Williams later today. “I am focused on my game. I don’t follow tennis and I don’t follow women’s tennis,” she replied when asked for her thoughts on the seven-time Wimbledon champion. “But I think it is going to be a good match.”