'GOOSEBUMPS'

Australian Open champion Keys maintained her hot streak with a win over 19th seed Vekic to set up a meeting with the Swiss wildcard Belinda Bencic.

Vekic, the silver medallist in Paris, showed terrific defence in winning the first set, fending off three break points in the second game and another in the fourth.

She had a 5-3 lead in the second set tiebreak but Keys dug in her heels, clinching it with an unreturnable serve as the Croatian thrust her racquet to the court in frustration.

"Sometimes after a close tiebreaker and winning the set and kind of having a little bit of, like, a surge of energy and everything, sometimes you can get almost a little bit too amped," said Keys.

"So I just wanted to try to play really tough the first game and just try to get the thing that I was doing well in order to close out that set."

Keys did exactly that, taking the momentum from the tiebreak and breaking Vekic to open the third. She closed out the comeback win with one of her lethal forehands to wild cheers from the home fans.

Earlier in the day, Bencic pulled off the upset against third seed Coco Gauff 3-6 6-3 6-4.

In a tightly-contested third set, Bencic came back from 0-40 down to break for a 5-4 lead and closed out the victory on her first match point when the American ripped a forward long.

"Obviously, this is why you are practicing and working hard all your life," Bencic said in her on-court interview.

"The way you cheered before the match ... I had chills and goosebumps."

Briton Jack Draper took down another home contender in former champion Taylor Fritz 7-5 6-4 to reach the quarter-finals for the first time, where he will play 11th seed Ben Shelton.

"I played a really high-level match," said US Open semi-finalist Draper. "I think I struggled here in the past with my serve, but I thought that I served great today, and I think that put a lot of pressure on him."

Shelton advanced with a 7-6(6) 6-1 win over fellow American Brandon Nakashima.

Women's top seed Aryna Sabalenka easily dispatched British lucky loser Sonay Kartal 6-1 6-2 and will meet Russian Liudmila Samsonova in the final eight.

Reuters

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