Halep, Bouchard reach semis

Simona Helps beats Sabine Lisicki while Eugenie Bouchard gets the better of Angelique Kerber at Wimbledon.

Bouchard has reached her third consecutive Grand Slam semi-final [GALLO/GETTY]

The new golden girl of tennis Eugenie Bouchard reached the Wimbledon semi-finals with a 6-3 6-4 defeat of Angelique Kerber.

In the last-four, she will face Simona Halep who continued her impressive season with a 6-4 6-0 victory over last year’s runner-up Sabine Lisicki.

Bouchard, the 20-year-old Canadian,  attacked relentlessly throughout the Court One duel, eventually breaking the dogged resistance of one of the sport’s best defenders. She survived four break points at 3-3 in the opening set and it proved a pivotal moment as she then tucked into Kerber’s weak serve in the next game to stretch ahead.

She looked to be racing away with the match when she moved 4-1 ahead in the second but Kerber, who downed Maria Sharapova the previous day, dug deep and came within a point of levelling the set at 5-5 as Bouchard faltered slightly.

The 13th seed responded in style though with a flurry of winners and sealed victory when Kerber hooked a forehand wide. 

Halep’s rise

Romanian Halep, beaten finalist at last month’s French Open, has climbed to third in the rankings this year by virtue of career-best results at consecutive grand slams and was in no mood to ease up against the 19th-seeded German.

Lisicki had shrugged off a shoulder injury in her fourth-round victory over Yaroslava Shvedova on Tuesday with no apparent ill effects and went on the attack with some big serves and ferocious groundstrokes to race into a 4-1 lead.

But Halep showed her mettle to pull back to 4-4. Lisicki seemed to sense she had missed a golden opportunity, allowing the Romanian to give her the runaround from the baseline and reel off the next eight games to seal a place in the last-four.

Source: Reuters