Women's No.1 seed Simona Halep used a rev-up from her Australian coach Darren Cahill when in sight of the finish line during her quarter-final win over Karolina Pliskova, as she shrugged off a troublesome Achilles to stay alive in the Sydney International.
The Romanian headline act battled to a 6-4, 7-5 win over the tattooed Czech, last year's finalist who sent Ana Ivanovic and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova packing from the tournament earlier this week.
Having broken Pliskova's serve to be within one game of booking her passage to the final four, Halep consulted Cahill and wobbled her way through the subsequent service game to seal the match, despite several outbursts born of frustration.
Whatever Lleyton Hewitt's long-time mentor said, it might be worth repeating later in the Australian summer as the world No.2 eyes a maiden grand slam victory in Melbourne.
Halep has made the last eight of the Australian Open for the past two years, and has reached the last four in each of the other three grand slams in the same period.
Her cause, though, won't be helped by a troublesome Achilles, which plagued the 24-year-old during a three-set win in her first match of the tournament on Tuesday.
She will continue to test her troublesome injury in the latter stages of this tournament, which will feature a semi-final showdown with in-form Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova.
Two-time grand slam champion Kuznetsova is well on her way to atoning for a horror Australian summer last year after breezing into the semi-finals.
She dropped only one point in the first-set tie-breaker against former French Open finalist Sara Errani in Wednesday's quarter-final, played in steamy conditions in Sydney's west.
Kuznetsova then rode the momentum to race through the second set 6-0.
The world No.25 bowed out in the first round last year and failed to win a match at the Australian Open, the second straight year she had done so.
It compounded an opening-round loss at Auckland, but Kuznetsova is enjoying something of a renaissance to begin the 2016 season.
