All hail CoCo and Madison, Timea and Garbine, new names to adorn Tuesday’s quarter-finals of the Ladies’ Singles and fresh faces with fascinating and inspiring tales to tell.
Serena Williams against Victoria Azarenka, two feisty old foes scrapping it out with no great love lost on Centre Court, may be the stand-out encounter, while Gentlemen’s Champion Novak Djokovic, resuming at two sets all in his fourth round encounter on No.1 Court, must keep his nerve in a perilous final set shoot-out with the huge-serving Kevin Anderson.
Yet opportunity knocks loudest for Americans CoCo Vandeweghe and Madison Keys, Switzerland’s Timea Bacsinszky and Spain’s Garbine Muguruza, none of whom have made the last eight here before.
First, you need to know all about CoCo, who has least to lose as she wanders in wonder to Centre Court to tackle world No.4 Maria Sharapova, the 2004 champion who is ranked 43 places higher and exists on another planet of renown.
1:00pm
1:00pm
Well, CoCo is not really CoCo, she explains. She is Colleen, but like her brothers Crash and Beau, who has a ticket though she’s not sure how he got it or how he made it here, and sister Honnie, the New Yorker goes by her nickname, which she once hated when her mates would dub her “CoCo Puff”.
Sharapova may be glamorous but, hey, CoCo’s grandma was Miss America 1952 and taught CoCo how to walk tall in heels. Grandad Ernie was a New York Knick, uncle Kiki was a basketball pro too and mother Tauna was an Olympic swimmer.
CoCo hasn't spoken to her dad for seven years after a fall-out but things are looking up career-wise. The big server hit rock bottom last year after being dumped out in qualifying at a minor event in Acapulco, forcing her to change her entire approach to the sport. Now, she’s enjoying the best performance in her eight years of Grand Slamming.
The reborn Bacsinszky had an even more troubled relationship with her father/coach who, she has explained, would abuse her, mainly psychologically, to the point where she had to persuade her mother to divorce him. “He put me in a cage,” she says of the bullying she wants to tell the world about to help others in the same position.
This now effervescent, likeable soul gave up tennis, fleeing dad’s shadow, and was ready to start a career in hotel catering until tempted two years ago to try one final time to reinvent her career, since when she has been playing with a new-found joy for the game, even reaching last month’s French Open semis.
She faces Muguruza, a 21-year-old born in Venezuela but fashioned in Barcelona, who brings unusual attack and aggression to her booming Spanish-honed game. On Sunday, she relaxed by watching Silence of the Lambs. On Monday, all that was missing as she disposed of Caroline Wozniacki was the chianti and the fava beans.
Muguruza is not alone in the new power brigade here. Keys, just 20 and under the wing of former champion Lindsay Davenport, is the other American in the last eight - this is the first time the US have had three women in the quarters for 11 years - having served far more aces, 47, than anyone, even Serena Williams. Yet can her appetite for quick kills in two or three-stroke rallies prevail against the wiles, angles and defensive skill of a refreshed 2012 finalist Aga Radwanska?
So, finally, back to the scrappers. Williams leads 16-3 in their head-to-heads but Azarenka has taken her to three sets in five of their last seven, the latest at Roland Garros getting them growling at each other over a disputed line call.
Williams mused: “She's due to win big and to do really well.” Then a pause before she concluded with a smile: “Incidentally, so am I.”
No threat was ever offered more sweetly.
