The flashlights going off in the gloaming around Centre Court could have been misconstrued as celebration flares as the Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis, who had never won at Wimbledon before this year, knocked out former winner and sixth seed Lleyton Hewitt in four sets 6-1, 7-7, 7-6(5), 6-2.

The Australian Open finalist, who comes from a village that means fairytale, was seen as an ephemeral streak across the tennis skies in Melbourne before, injury-stricken, he subsequently disappeared off the radar only to turn up in London two weeks ago.

"It is amazing for me, amazing for my parents, everything came so fast. It's just unbelievable emotions," he said after the match.

Sent to France at the age of 13 to tennis camp, the 21-year-old quickly got his talent noticed and in 2003 became the ITF junior boys champion. Two years later, at the end of 2005, he was ranked 40 and, going into Wimbledon, a career high 16. He is the only player from Cyprus, male or female, to have played in a major or even to be ranked inside the top 100.

Baghdatis romped through the first set 6-1, then broke Hewitt in the first and third games of the second set before letting the Aussie come back and take the set 5-7. Given Hewitt's legendary doggedness, that spelled trouble.

But Baghdatis, unafraid and often commanding, took the third set narrowly on a tiebreak, his mobile, hard-hitting game regularly outmanoeuvring the favourite, who was a little way off his best. Unusually, it was Hewitt who wilted in what was the final act as Baghdatis cheekily took the fourth set and match on Hewitt's serve.

He next meets Jarko Nieminen or Rafael Nadal, whose match was postponed because it would not be finished before light faded.

And so to Roger Federer, over whose opponents the weight of inevitability hangs dolefully each time they face him across a grass court. The Swiss number one is not only freighted with a sense of expectation but also performs like an illusionist and stamps the game with a style and bearing that is his alone. Again he obliged in three sets against Mario Ancic.

Federer has said that after his post-match interviews he often feels like he has just been to a psychiatrist. Yesterday after the 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 winning experience, he was asked if playing as well as he did yesterday was like "having an out-of-body experience".

People are now borrowing from the drug culture in trying to explain the level to which the defending champion has brought his play, when words like sublime and unbelievable have become threadbare with use.

The top seed, who cut Ancic to pieces in one hour and 46 minutes, is comfortably on track to equal another of Bjorn Borg's records in becoming the first player since the Swede in 1976 to win the tournament without dropping a set.

In fairness to Ancic, the seventh-seeded Croatian, most others would not have lasted as long as he did in the twice-rain-delayed match that was also briefly interrupted by two interlopers from the Fathers For Justice group.

A break of serve in each of the first two sets was enough for Federer to claim each, and when he broke Ancic in the first game of the third set and again in the third game for 3-0, the match was over.

Federer, in such flawless mood, had earned his 46th consecutive grasscourt win.

"You get to feel that you are absolutely in control. You are not afraid to try anything, you are not afraid to hit the ball hard, you are not afraid to go for aces. That is how I felt today," said Federer.

Ancic, meanwhile, shook his head in frustration.

"It's Roger, you know, what can you say?" he observed. "I don't think there's anyone who can beat him on grass at the moment. I would be very surprised."

Federer will face the 34-year-old Swede Jonas Bjorkman in the semi-final. The unseeded Bjorkman came through 6-7, 6-4, 7-6, 6-4 against the Czech Radek Stepanek in another rain-delayed match that continued well into the evening.

"I didn't believe I had another semi-final in me," said the oldest man to reach the semi-finals here since Jimmy Connors in 1987.