Stosur powers her way to meet Errani in semi-final

Sixth seed Stosur, who lost to Francesca Schiavone in the showpiece two years ago, was in fine form as she saw off her Slovak opponent 6-4, 6-1.

Cibulkova is only 5ft 3in, and the kick serve and vicious topspin that are Stosur’s trademarks proved too much for the 15th seed to counter. She said: “I have to say that she played unbelievable today.

“Her topspin and her serve, I mean, she played like a man, and it’s really hard to play against a man. It was driving me crazy on the court today. So it was really, really hard.”

Stosur, who was also a semi-finalist at Roland Garros in 2009, maintained her remarkable record of never having lost a match in the main draw of a grand slam after winning the first set. The 28-year-old said: “I guess that’s a great stat to have, but when you lose the first set you want to come back, too. It just shows that I try to get off to a good start and when I do that, I can really impose my play on the opponent.”

In the last four, Stosur will face Italy’s Sara Errani, a player she has beaten in all five of their previous meetings, including on clay in Rome last month. Errani is having a superb year and has now surpassed her achievements at the Australian Open, where she lost in the quarter-finals to Petra Kvitova. She had never beaten a top-ten player in 28 attempts going into yesterday’s match against tenth seed Angelique Kerber, but she put that to bed with a battling display. There were eight breaks of serve in the second set and twice Kerber served for it, but the German could not get over the line and Errani dominated the tie-break to win 6-3, 7-6 (7/2).

The 25-year-old said: “At the beginning of the second set I was feeling a bit more tired, but I just tried to keep playing like I was playing.”

The other two quarter-finals will be played today, with Maria Sharapova facing Kaia Kanepi and Wimbledon champion Kvitova playing qualifier Yaroslava Shvedova.