The omens are looking good. Before The Championships began, Ashleigh Barty had dared to say out loud that she wanted to win Wimbledon. On Tuesday she won the first all-Australian quarter-final since Evonne Goolagong beat Wendy Turnbull in 1980.

Kicking on from that victory, Goolagong went to on to reach the final and beat Chris Evert to claim her second title. And Goolagong is Barty’s mentor. And Barty beat Ajla Tomljanovic, her fellow Australian, 6-1, 6-3 in 66 minutes.

Could history be about to repeat itself? Obviously, Evert will not be waiting for her should she reach the final (we had spotted that), but could Barty lift the Venus Rosewater Dish this year? On the evidence of Tuesday’s performance, the answer is ‘yes’. Most definitely ‘yes’.

“This is a dream come true – it genuinely is,” Barty said. “I know you hear that a lot from athletes but this is my dream and I’m extremely grateful that I’ve got an opportunity to come out her and have fun and live out what I work so hard to do. And I’m loving every minute – and this afternoon was no different.

“Ajla is an incredible competitor. I had to play my absolute best to be able to compete with her. She’s had an incredible fortnight and I think all Aussies back home are bloody proud of her and it’s really nice to share the court with her today.”

The Australian pair are the founding members of a mutual appreciation society. Barty calls Tomljanovic “a brilliant chick” and she is “absolutely rapt for her” that she has been playing so well and reached the quarter-finals.

Tomljanovic, returning the compliment, could not praise Barty highly enough: “I always talk so highly of her because it's really what I think,” she said. “How she goes about everything, I see it as an example.”

Although they had never played each other before, they had practised many times, they had been teammates in the Billie Jean King Cup and they will be again in two and a half weeks’ time when they go to the Olympics in Tokyo. They know each other very well as people but they also know every wrinkle and detail of each other’s game.

While that was all very nice and made for a lovely story – two proud Aussies appreciating what makes the other great – there was a place in the semi-finals at stake; it was time for the gloves to come off.

The thought of the easy-going, unfussy and unfussed Barty getting mean and nasty seems…. well, it’s just wrong. That is not how Barty does things. And sure enough, there was no steely-eyed glare from the other end of the court as the world No.1 took no time at all to romp to a 4-1 lead with two breaks of serve safely in the bank.

Instead, there was a look of calm and of controlled authority – and a forehand that Tomljanovic could neither read nor deal with should she find herself in the right place at the right time. Before the match, Tomljanovic had said all the right things.

She had come to Wimbledon hoping to take no more than “baby steps” (don’t think too far ahead; don’t set unrealistic goals) and the result has been a place in the second week of a Grand Slam for only the second time in her career.

When it came to the specifics of facing Barty, her approach was much the same: don’t run before you can walk.

“I'm not thinking so much about winning,” she explained. “How much I'm thinking about, OK, what do I have to do to put myself in the best spot? Then hopefully my instinct takes over.” 

But after 24 minutes, the instinct of any sane, rational person would have been to run for the hills. Go now, save yourself while you still can. Barty was slicing through the backbone of Tomljanovic’s game like a fishmonger filleting a fish as she took the first set.

Tomljanovic, though, is not one to back down. When she started out, she was soon marked out as a talent to watch (that was when she got to the fourth round at Roland-Garros). Two years later, in 2016, she needed shoulder surgery and was out for more than 12 months.

So serious was the operation that she had to sleep sitting upright for two months before she was finally allowed to lie down in her bed. But she was prepared to do whatever it took to rescue her career and, since February 2017, she has been inching her way back.

That her breakthrough should have come at Wimbledon, a place where she had never made it beyond the second round before, was a surprise but she was willing to take whatever chances came her way. Unfortunately for her, Barty was in no mood to let her.

The second set gave cause for hope – Tomljanovic broke serve in the opening game. She may have dropped serve in the very next game, but she was putting up more of a fight against the top seed. Or she was until Barty had had enough of that and moved up a gear – she broke for 3-1 and put her foot down to accelerate towards the semi-final and an appointment with Angelique Kerber.

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