This week just keeps getting better for Harmony Tan. Five days after her epic dismissal of Serena Williams in her first match at Wimbledon, the world No.115 maintained her run of unprecedented form to defeat Katie Boulter and earn a stunning place in the last 16.

Composed from the word go, the nerveless Frenchwoman was always in charge as she forged her way to a 6-1, 6-1 triumph in just 51 minutes. She will play Coco Gauff or Amanda Anisimova for a place in the last eight.

“I don’t think I believe it yet,” she told the crowd on No.2 Court. “If I sleep a little bit tonight, maybe I will believe it tomorrow. Today was really good tennis although I don’t know why. It’s amazing. I like grass. And I like to play with slice and volley, so I’m really happy. It was very emotional after the first round against Serena, and now I’m just playing match by match.”

Whatever Tan is doing, it’s making for a winning formula. This is the first time she has strung together three successive wins. She began The Championships with just nine Tour-level main draw wins to her name, while her only grass court main draw win was in a 125K event in Gaiba, Italy, last month.

Had the seedings in this section of the draw panned out, this match would have featured last year’s runner-up, Karolina Pliskova, and Sara Sorribes Tormo, but heroics from Boulter and Tan changed their destiny.

In the second round Boulter saw off the Czech for the second time in 10 days, not only repeating her Eastbourne victory over Pliskova but better still battling back from one set down in the Centre Court cathedral.

Tan’s own second round win over the No.32 seed was just as impressive for the style in which she backed up that astonishing dismissal of Williams, blasting 30 winners to expel Sorribes Tormo in straight sets.

So here it was – an extraordinary opportunity for players of almost equal ranking at No.115 (Tan) and No.118 (Boulter) to cleave new career territory. Each had known hardship to reach this chance. Boulter’s career has been plagued by injury, with a long battle against chronic fatigue syndrome.

Tan was unable to play much at junior level, where so much can be learned, through financial constraints and instead started on the lower levels of the professional Tour from a very young age.

Boulter came into this match having banked nine wins on grass since coming back from a three-month break with a foot injury. But on a breezy No.2 Court, she just never got going. Tan was immediately seeing the ball well, drilling away with her signature steady pace, showing great hands to dart out into a 3-0 lead. Boulter had to fend off another break point just to get on the scoreboard.

But she could not find the attacking groove of winners which worked to such effect (twice) against Pliskova. Tan brought up two set points with her second ace of the match, and fired down her third to seal it.

No doubt Boulter will have told herself that she had reversed the course of her match against Pliskova, and she could surely do it again. But immediately she was plunged into trouble at the start of the second set, as Tan snatched a quickfire break to love.

The fearlessness which had characterised Boulter’s play this week had gone, replaced by an unwelcome diffidence. A double fault on match point told its own story. By contrast Tan was utterly comfortable, deploying her signature slice and even a ‘tweener' to unanswerable effect.

Perhaps the burdens of this week had at last mentally exhausted Boulter, after the death of her beloved maternal grandmother on Tuesday. Somewhere very near, just out of sight, Jill Gartshore – herself a regional tennis player – has surely seen every moment of her granddaughter’s wonderful achievements.

But this day belonged to Harmony Tan. The woman who had never played a main draw match here before this week is looking thoroughly at home at Wimbledon 2022.

“I'm just happy to be in the second week,” Tan said later.

“For me it was impossible to beat Serena in the first round. I don't believe it. Today was a great match for me because Katie normally plays really good on grass.

“I think it was really hard for her because she played at home. It was our first third round I think for both. I was really cool today.”

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