In a Championships beset by upsets, the eventual quarterfinal line-up on the women’s side is stacked with quality.
Multiple Grand Slam champions Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek are there, as is fellow top-eight seed Mirra Andreeva.
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Pundits’ semifinal prediction Amanda Anisimova has also made it to the last eight and so too Liudmila Samsonova, a two-time WTA tournament champion on grass. There’s also 2021 Roland Garros finalist Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, and Bencic, a former world No.4.
Bencic returned to professional tennis as an unranked mother last October following 13 months away, yet has already trimmed her ranking to 35th.
A Wimbledon junior champion in 2013 who felt an immediate affinity for grass when she first set foot on it, she looms as one of the more formidable players remaining.
She owns 50 tour-level match wins on grass – the most of any women’s quarterfinalist this year – and a winning rate on the surface approaching 70 per cent.
The former Eastbourne champion enters her quarterfinal match-up against Andreeva with the confidence of having won six of her seven career grasscourt quarterfinals.
She was also one point away from an eight grasscourt quarterfinal at Wimbledon in 2023, before Swiatek staged a dramatic Centre Court comeback to deny her.
“I’m happy I finally got through today from the fourth round; I always got stuck in the fourth round,” she laughed in a Tennis Channel interview. “I’m really happy with how I played better from round to round and I’m improving on the court, so I hope to continue like that.”