Clijsters reaches last eight

Second seed Kim Clijsters became the quickest player in 21 years to reach 50 wins in a season as she strolled into the Wimbledon quarter-finals for the second time today.

The Belgian overcame her doubles partner Ai Sugiyama 6-3 6-2 to equal her best All England Club performance of two years ago and in the process achieve a milestone last set this early by Martina Navratilova in 1982.

Memories flickered back to Clijsters’ first round 6-0 6-0 win over Rossana Neffa-De Los Rios as she took the first 13 points of the match.

But she did not have the first set her own way as Sugiyama took one break back when the Belgian served for the set.

The 13th seed’s own serve continued to let her down in the second set as Clijsters broke for 3-2 and two games later took advantage of two double faults from her opponent to break again.

Clijsters served out for another comfortable if hardly competitive win to move into the last eight.