Diva days have a habit of ending in tears. Yesterday they fluttered around the show courts and as we sat around in ever-widening pools of perspiration hoping for a sweep of stylised beauty, or a flourish of artistic intent, to uplift the draw, we were left sodden by the heat and humidity, dampened by the wonderful functionality of the last four. No diva tears: they are all, the first, second, third and fourth seeds, through to the semi-finals.

As yet, people have not risen from their seats enthralled, and as much as tennis at its best can transcend the basic mechanics of running and hitting, yesterday's duels in the sun lacked the soft touch, the inventive twist and the creative choreography. Of them all, it is France's Amelie Mauresmo who fires on mood and expression, but even the world number one resorted to effective serve-and-volley tennis against Anastasia Myskina, whom she beat for the eighth time in nine meetings.

Perhaps it was as much the opponents as the winners who shaped the matches to their liking in the hope of grinding out an upset.

Kim Clijsters, who is always at home chasing balls at the back of the court and gymnastically returning more than she has a right to, creates by power more than invention. Her opponent, Na Li, has evolved into a hard hitter unafraid of the net, but with Clijsters she was pinned to the backcourt and thereby perished in the face of harder, more accurate groundstrokes.

Justine Henin-Hardenne, the little Belgian dormouse who grows into a lion on the claycourts of Paris but has yet to prove her Grand Slam credentials on grass, accepted the easiest of the quarter-finals, against the qualifier Severine Bremond.

The Frenchwoman will be pleased she left knowing Henin-Hardenne had to battle for her semi-final place over two sets.

So to Maria Sharapova, all flashing tennis whites and elegant limbs, who sought to blast away at her Russian compatriot Elena Dementieva and has now patented screaming like a banshee as part of her armoury.

Sharapova has been seamlessly tweaking her game as she has moved, sometimes unsteadily, through these two weeks, but never, ever has she done it quietly.

Dementieva, who went out 6-1, 6-4, did not find the glamour of Sharapova in any way compensated for the petrifying noise.

Back when Monica Seles was winning tournaments in the 1990s, her grunts and groans were a topic of heated discussion. And when none other than Martina Navratilova declared it was off-putting to opponents, Seles was forced to take a vow of silence.

The argument then was that an opponent could not hear the ball off the racquet strings and therefore was deprived of one of the elements players use to try to read shots.

"Personally I think it's a bit too much but that's the way she's been playing for a long time," said Dementieva of Sharapova.

"I think the best way is to beat her, not to tell her what to do. I mean I don't know how to measure it. I don't know how loud it was.

"Next time I beat her I will say something. But when you are losing like 6-1, 4-1, it doesn't look good if you go to the umpire and start talking about how loud she's screaming."

Sharapova had won four of their five previous matches, although they had never before met in a Grand Slam. Again her groundstrokes proved more accurate and, without the silencer, more powerful too. Importantly, the first serves too were landing and causing untold damage. Twenty of them did not come back.

Sharapova next meets Mauresmo, who took three sets against Myskina. A 6-1 first was followed by a miserable stretch into the second set, where unforced errors mounted to such an extent that Mauresmo dropped the set 3-6.

"I think I was playing very, very well in that first set and then started to make too many unforced errors," said Mauresmo, who went on to tidy up her game and win the third set 6-3.

"But you know, it's a good lesson. Today was some great tennis and some not-so-good tennis."

The other pairing sets the two Belgians, Henin-Hardenne and Clijsters, against each other in what will be their 22nd match-up.

Stretching back to 1998, when they first met as teenagers in Israel, Henin-Hardenne, the two-times French Open champion, leads 11-10 in career wins.

"Yeah, I remember it," said Clijsters. "We were 14 or 15. I remember more the place, a beautiful place in Israel. But don't ask me what happened in the match. That's too long ago."

She lost. But the most recent meetings are probably more easily remembered. The Walloon-speaking Clijsters has played her French-speaking rival twice this year, at the French Open and Eastbourne, and lost both times.