WIMBLEDON, England - Eugenie Bouchard was named for a British princess, by a mother with a fascination for the royal family. It has endeared the 20-year-old Canadian to the fans at Wimbledon. Winning, though, has helped most of all.
Bouchard plays tennis like a blue-collar worker, her gifted all-around game lifted by a badger-like ferocity. She moves in on serves, crisscrossing stiff forehands across the net, facing her opponent with strength and nerve. She has no interest in making friends on the court.
Her opponents are falling at a steady clip. She was the only woman to reach the semifinals of the year's first majors, the Australian Open and French Open. Her breakthrough seemed just a matter of time.
It may be days away. Bouchard, seeded 13, dissected No. 9 Angelique Kerber on Wednesday, 6-3, 6-4, to reach her third-straight Grand Slam semifinal.
Bouchard next faces No. 3 Simona Halep, who eliminated Sabine Lisicki, a finalist last year, in a 6-4, 6-0 rout. Lisicki won the first three games of their match, but Halep took 12 of the final 13 to extinguish any drama on Centre Court.
Amid a swarm of rising players, Bouchard and Halep, a 22-year-old from Romania, are the two most promising.
The other women's semifinal will pit a pair of veteran Czechs, Lucie Safarova and Petra Kvitova, the 2011 champion. They won quarterfinal matches on Tuesday.
Halep's rout of Lisicki was as impressive as Bouchard's victory. No women's player seems to benefit more from playing on grass more than Lisicki. She has reached the quarterfinals in her past five appearances at Wimbledon and was a finalist last year, falling to Marion Bartoli. Among women, only Serena Williams has had more victories at the tournament since 2009.
Lisicki was seeded just 19th, a reflection of her uneven play on other surfaces. But with four of the top five seeded women losing before reaching the quarterfinals, Lisicki seemed to have as much chance as anyone. It was already assured that 2014 be the fourth straight year that three different women win the season's first three Grand Slam tournaments.
Lisicki took a 3-0 lead against Halep, and nudged it to 4-1 in the first set. With little warning, her usually steady and strong serve abandoned her. Unforced errors multiplied.
Halep offered no relief. While she struggled to place her first serves (a lowly 50 percent), she won most of the points with ease when she did. She broke Lisicki with ease.
In her past four Grand Slam tournaments, Halep reached the fourth round at the United States Open, the quarterfinals at the Australian Open and the finals of the French Open, where she lost in three sets to Maria Sharapova.
That trajectory has her aimed at a Wimbledon title. But she must face Bouchard in the semifinals on the way.
Bouchard grew up in the English-speaking neighborhood of Montreal. She and her siblings - Beatrice, Charlotte and Williams - were named for British royalty. Their mother, Julie, Bouchard joked, is a 'closet royalist.'
Eugenie and Beatrice are twins, were named for the daughters of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson. That tidbit was received well with the British press.
She carries herself with confidence and unusual maturity for a 20-year-old making just her seventh Grand Slam appearance. She came to one news conference this tournament in a kimono, a gift from Japanese television. She often has stuffed animals tossed to her by growing legions of fans.
With the schedule compressed because of rain delays days earlier, Kerber, a 26-year-old German, was playing a day after a difficult victory over Maria Sharapova.
Bouchard applied pressure from the start on Court 1. She intimidates players by moving forward, unafraid to hop into their best serves. She moves quickly side to side, and shuffles forward at every opportunity, as if seeing the net as a front line that can be moved.
She approached the net 16 times - Kerber did it seven - and won 12 of those points. She won 81 percent of her first serves. She hit 29 winners.
She is in the semifinals for the third major tournament in a row. It is both fitting and foreseeable that Wimbledon be the one where, playing in front of the Royal Box at Centre Court, she wins the crown.
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