Liudmila Samsonova's wild, breakthrough summer on the grass just got even wilder.

The 22-year-old Russian, a debutante and wild card entry, defeated former US Open champion Sloane Stephens to extend her hot streak on the surface to 10 matches and reach the fourth round. That takes her through to the busiest - and, yes, wildest - day in the tennis calendar, Wimbledon's Manic Monday.

In the space of one extraordinary month on Europe's lawns, Samsonova has played some big, bold and brutal tennis to transform her status in the sport, going from the Tour's fringes to a first appearance on Wimbledon's sun-bleached No.1 Court and on to the second week.

At the start of June, when she was ranked outside the top 100 and she was yet to win a match on the sport's original surface, this would all have been simply unimaginable.

But then Samsonova qualified for a grass court tournament in Berlin before going on to defeat the likes of Madison Keys, Victoria Azarenka and Belinda Bencic to land her first WTA title. On top of everything else that she gained in Berlin - ranking points, prize money, respect, belief - she was given a wild card into The Championships, and she has made the most of that gift.

Samsonova might want to rethink the line in her biography on the WTA website which says that hard courts are her favourite surface. "I'm completely in love with this surface," she said of the grass after beating Stephens 6-2, 2-6, 6-4 in two hours.

Until this summer, she had played only one main draw match on grass, a first round defeat in Nottingham a couple of years ago. But the world No.65 just keeps on winning on the lawns, going through to play Karolina Pliskova, the No.8 seed from the Czech Republic and a former world No.1.

Just an inch under six feet tall, Samsonova has a powerful baseline game and she was always looking to impose herself on the grass by stepping into the court to play her shots. In the end, it was too much for Stephens, a Wimbledon quarter-finalist in 2013, who had defeated Czech Petra Kvitova, twice a former champion, in the first round.

You know that you're doing something right, as a wild card playing your first Wimbledon, when the crowd start cheering your opponent, a former Grand Slam champion and world No.3, as if she were the new player on the scene.

This victory was all the more impressive because it wasn't won in straight sets. When Samsonova couldn't convert the break points she had against Stephens' serve in the opening game of the second set, it brought about a shift in momentum, with the American going on to take the set and level the match.

But Samsonova, in the habit of winning matches, responded by raising her level to take the deciding set, even dealing with the inevitable nerves as she closed it out.

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