Former champion Simona Halep marked her return to Centre Court on with a scintillating performance to thrash fourth-seeded Spaniard Paula Badosa 6-1 6-2 and reach the Wimbledon quarter-finals.
Playing on the main show court for the first time since sweeping aside Serena Williams in the 2019 final, the 16th-seeded Romanian put on another show for the crowd.
She smashed 17 winners, kept a tab on her errors and broke Badosa's serve five times to close out the victory in an hour.
Halep has been flying under the radar at the 2022 Championships but is now considered a serious title contender as the only former champion left in the draw and with 11 straight wins on the All England Club's manicured lawns.
None of the top 15 women's seeds, other than Tunisian third seed Ons Jabeur, have survived either.
Halep has yet to lose a set in the 2022 Championships and faced just a single breakpoint against Badosa.
"I'm really pleased with the way I played this tournament so far. Day by day, it's getting better," said Halep, who missed last year's tournament with an injury, while Wimbledon was cancelled due to Covid-19 in 2020.
"I'm just looking forward to playing the next one and to give my best again, as today."
Simona steals the show.
— Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) July 4, 2022
Halep's pinpoint forehand is Monday's Play of the Day 👌#Wimbledon | @HSBC_Sport pic.twitter.com/uB74GDqg8y
Halep dropped only four games in the pair's only previous meeting in Madrid in April and their second match-up also turned out to be another forgettable outing for Badosa, who beat two-time former champion Petra Kvitova in her previous round.
Former world number one Halep, who won her first major at the 2018 French Open, lost just three points on her serve while breaking the Spaniard's delivery three times to win the opening set in 22 minutes.
Badosa saved three breakpoints to hold her serve in the fourth game of the second set but Halep showed great court coverage and consistency from behind the baseline to convert her next chance to close in on victory.
Halep broke her opponent's delivery once more and sealed the contest on her third matchpoint when Badosa sprayed a forehand wide for her 21st unforced error.
Kazakh 17th seed Elena Rybakina hit twice as many winners as unseeded opponent Petra Martic of Croatia on Monday to progress to her maiden Wimbledon quarter-final with a 7-5 6-3 victory.
The 23-year-old Rybakina, who switched to playing for Kazakhstan from Russia aged 19, hit 26 winners in the opening contest on Court One while committing five fewer unforced errors than the 80th-ranked Martic to control the match.
Rybakina, who reached the fourth round of the grass court slam on her debut last year, will now play Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia for a place in Thursday's semi-finals.
Rybakina, whose previous best result came at the French Open last year when she reached the last eight, started strongly on Monday to race to a 3-0 lead.
Martic rallied to reel in the next four games to put her nose ahead in the match only for the Kazakh to break back immediately to level things. Rybakina then got the crucial break in the 12th game to take the first set.
The second set stayed on serve till Rybakina cracked Martic's delivery in the sixth game and it proved enough for her to seal the win in an hour and 20 minutes.
Ajla Tomljanovic became the first Australian woman in more than two decades to reach back-to-back Wimbledon quarter-finals when she wore down Alize Cornet in an electrifying 4-6 6-4 6-3 contest.
The unseeded Aussie had beaten Cornet in a topsy-turvy three-setter at last year's championships and Monday's encounter was no less eventful as both players kept being broken.
With Cornet leading 4-2 in the opening set, the players embarked on a sequence of six games that went against serve.
Although the 32-year-old Frenchwoman managed to win the first set during that run, it set a trend in a match which featured 16 breaks, with Tomljanovic coming out on top of that count 9-7.
None of them were as important as the final game, however.
After Cornet, who had ended world number one Iga Swiatek's remarkable 37-match winning streak in the previous round, saved Tomljanovic's first two match points, the players brought the Court Two crowd to their feet in a 26-shot rally.
It ended with Cornet's tired limbs failing her as she smashed the ball into the net and immediately collapsed on to her back -- hardly surprising considering the hard-hitting baseline contest had gone on for more than two-and-a-half hours.
Seconds later, Tomljanovic almost toppled over the net as she hit a crosscourt winner to seal her place in the last eight. Once she knew victory was hers, the tears running down her face summed up the emotions of the afternoon.
