A day of high drama on Centre Court ended with the credentials of the two main contenders for the men's singles at Wimbledon this year burning brighter than ever.
While Roger Federer staged his own version of the great escape to recover from two sets down against Marin Cilic, the 2014 US Open winner, Andy Murray was surviving the first crisis points of his Wimbledon campaign against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga to remain on course for a second SW19 title.
At £126 for ten sets of tennis, a ticket for this grand old arena has rarely delivered such value for money.
Read more: Jamie Murray's men's doubles bid ends as French pair prove too strong
As the highest remaining seed left in this year's competition, the Scot has a target on his back but he dodged a bullet here to book his place in the last four. 
A magnificent seventh Wimbledon semi-final - the same number his coach Ivan Lendl and nemesis Novak Djokovic have reached - will be played tomorrow against Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic, with Federer reprising his 2014 semi-final against Milos Raonic in the other match.
One fringe benefit of it all was the Scot moving onto 51 match wins at Wimbledon, equal to the haul claimed by five-time SW19 winner Bjorn Borg.
"He's one of the best players that's ever played so I must be doing something right to have equalled his wins," said the Scot. "He also won the tournament a lot more than me so I still have a long way to go to catch up. Hopefully I can win a couple more between now and the end of the tournament."
While Murray was never behind yesterday, the two-set lead which he established by early evening soon vanished in the face of a resurgence from the 31-year-old from Le Mans and he was left to win the match all over again. While the Scot maintains a proud record of losing just once from two sets to love up, to David Nalbandian, way back on his maiden visit to Wimbledon in 2005, his fans were going through the ringer here against an opponent who had never previously lost over five sets at this venue and had even recovered from a two sets down in a Wimbledon semi-final against Federer.
Tsonga had appeared broken and demoralised by the loss of a see-sawing tie-break at the end of a 76-minute first set when he took just 26 to succumb in the second. But where Murray's last 16 opponent Nick Kyrgios had crumbled, the Frenchman looked inside himself and re-discovered some of his best tennis. 
He recovered in the third, then rallied from a break down to reel off four straight games and take the fourth set 6-4. He even had a break point at the start of the fifth before Murray, cleverly re-energising a flagging crowd, raced into a double break lead and never took his foot from the throttle.
His 7-6 (10), 6-1, 3-6, 4-6, 6-1 victory took just shy of four hours to complete and, after sailing untouched through the opening four rounds, the World No 2 said he felt his sternest examination since his victory against Milos Raonic in the final of Queen's Club a fortnight ago could pay dividends.
"It can help to go through games and stages in matches that are challenging," he said. "If you're in that position in the next couple of matches, you know you've been there."
Centre Court was half empty when Murray and Tsonga appeared on court, too busy refreshing themselves after a 6-7 (4), 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (9), 6-3 win against Cilic which Federer said afterwards was "not the biggest, but a big one" in his career.
The Swiss invoked the memory of a famous escape against Tommy Haas en route to his 2009 Roland Garros win after saving three match points to book his semi-final against Milos Raonic. "It's not a fake belief, it's a real belief that you need to have in those moments," said Federer. "And it was there, which is great news for me."
Raonic - a 6?4, 7?5, 5?7, 6?4 winner against Novak Djokovic's tormentor-in-chief Sam Querrey - is another man who believes he can take the title. "I came here with a simple goal for this tournament," Raonic said. "I think everybody on my team has that same objective."
Murray expects an equally tough encounter against Tomas Berdych, the 2010 runner up at this venue, who was a comfortable winner against Lucas Pouille of France. His eight victories in 14 meetings include the semi-finals of the 2012 US Open and the 2015 Australian Open, the latter being the famous match after which his future wife Kim wore a Parental Advisory T-shirt to take the sting out of some swear words which she aimed towards the Czech.
While one Murray made it through the quarter-finals of his chosen event Andy's big brother Jamie wasn't so fortunate. He and his partner Bruno Soares of Brazil lost a heart-breaker to Julien Benneteau and Eduard Roger-Vasselin of France by a 4-6, 4-6, 7-6 (11), 7-6 (1), 8-10 scoreline.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel