World No. 1 Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva insists she is more comfortable than ever with the top seed tag after surging into the quarter-finals at the Junior Championships at Wimbledon.

Jimenez Kasintseva posted back-to-back victories on a bumper day of junior action, defeating wild card Eva Shaw of Great Britain 7-6(4) 6-4 and then Reese Brantmeier of the United States 4-6 7-6(5) 6-4 to take her place in the last eight.

Consecutive victories for the 15-year-old were all the more impressive after she revealed in her post-match press conference that she had woken this morning feeling unwell.

Despite this, she battled through and now another wild card from Great Britain, this time Alicia Dudeney, awaits as she bids to reach the semi-finals of a Junior Grand Slam for the first time since her triumph at the 2020 Australian Open.

The teenager has spoken previously of how in the aftermath of her triumph in Melbourne she allowed talk of potential back-to-back Junior Grand Slam crowns to distract and affect her. Nothing could be further from Jimenez Kasintseva’s mind now.

“I tell myself that I am No. 1 because I am doing well,” Jimenez Kasintseva told itftennis.com. “I don’t feel uncomfortable at all and if I am No. 1 it is because I deserve to be No. 1. Anyway, No. 1 is just a number and I am Victoria. I don’t think about it.

“After winning at the Australian Open I had so many questions going into Roland Garros about back-to-back Junior Grand Slams and a second Junior Grand Slam that year – I just wasn’t used to it.

“I was just 14 years old and thinking too much about those comments. The match I lost at Roland Garros [in the 2nd round against Russia’s Alina Charaeva] made me feel bad. I started practising with my dad, then won a Grade 1 and started to feel better.”

The No. 1 seed in the boys’ draw is China’s Juncheng Shang, known as Jerry, and, like Jimenez Kasintseva, showed no signs of pressure or weight of expectation as he dispatched qualifier Robin Bertrand of France 6-3 6-4 to reach round three. Matthew William Donald of the Czech Republic is his next opponent.

“I really don’t mind being the top seed,” Shang, who was also seeded No. 1 at last month’s Roland Garros Junior Championships, told itftennis.com. “I think it has more of an effect on other people as they see me as a higher-ranked player and go 120 per cent against me every time. But, for me, that’s just normal.

“I think people definitely raise their game. At the beginning of the year when the same players were playing me, it was different. Now, their energy on court is different. You can feel it.”

For both Jimenez Kasintseva and Shang, playing on grass is a new phenomenon this year, although for the former it is rapidly becoming her favourite surface – and perhaps it was always destined to be so.

“I don’t know why but ever since I was a little girl my dad always told me that I would be good on grass,” she said. “A few years ago, as a joke, he put on my ITF profile that my favourite surface was grass.

“I didn’t know until a friend contacted me and said, ‘your favourite surface is grass? I didn’t know’. I then asked my dad and he told me he’d said that when I hadn’t even played on grass before.

“These are my first tournaments on grass [Roehampton, where she reached the semi-finals and here] and I am doing well and liking it a lot. For now, it is my favourite surface.”

Elsewhere in the girls’ draw, Russia’s Polina Kudermetova and Oceane Babel of France, who were seeded Nos. 4 and 5 respectively, both bowed out of the competition in the second round.

Kudermetova’s conqueror, Nastasja Mariana Schunk of Germany, advanced further and will now face Matilde Paoletti of Italy for a place in the semi-finals.

Czech Linda Fruhvirtova, who is seeded No. 8, also remains in the girls’ draw and will go head-to-head with Mara Guth, another German, in the quarter-finals, while No. 6 seed Kristina Dmitruk faces Spain’s Ane Mintegi del Olmo. Mintegi Del Olmo overcame No. 2 Alexandra Eala of the Philippines in round two. 

In the boys’ draw, No. 4 seed Pedro Boscardin Dias of Brazil and Bruno Kuzuhara of the United States joined Shang in the third round at the expense of Great Britain’s Lui Maxted and Abedallah Shelbayh of Jordan respectively. However, it was the end of the road for fellow seeds Arthur Fils, Daniel Rincon, Sean Cuenin, Viacheslav Bielinskyi, Alexander Bernard, Alejandro Manzanera Pertusa, Leo Borg and Mark Lajal.