FORGET Oasis and all that modern stuff, they're for the players. Around the WTA Tour office here at Wimbledon, it's French crooner Maurice Chevalier whose work is getting the most airings just now.

"Thank heavens," you can hear the organisers of the circuit - which 12 months ago seemed moribund due to the lack of competition at the top - hum joyously as you pass their crowded hangout, "for little girls".

Martina Hingis was the first to arrive on the scene while Venus Williams, Jana Kandarr and Olga Barabanschikova all seem destined to make their mark in the not too distant future. This week, however, it has been the turn of the Russian teenager Anna Kournikova to confirm her arrival with the 16-year-old from Moscow beating Helena Sukova yesterday to reach the quarter-finals of a Grand Slam for the first time.

Sukova, as it happens, played her first Grand Slam (the Australian Open) in 1981 - six months before Kournikova was born - and loyal servant as she has been in the intervening years, it seems likely that the powers that be at the WTA would have resorted to a tranquiliser dart, if necessary, to prevent her turning her one set advantage against the teenager into a place in the last eight.

Kournikova, who answered the admiring whistles of the crowd after an earlier win with the remark "you couldn't afford me boys" didn't need any help from the stands yesterday. For the third successive match she came from a set down to win, this time gradually wresting control of the net away from her vastly more experienced opponent. More remarkably, Kournikova looked every bit as wily as she steadfastly defended an early break of service in the third to complete a fine 2-6 6-2, 6-3 victory and earn a quarter-final meeting with Iva Majoli.

After one particularly brash post-match press conference performance at last year's US Open a seasoned observer remarked of the then 15-year-old: "What I like about her is that she has no false modesty. In fact, she has no modesty at all."

Last night, though, she was determined to play down her success here commenting simply: "I'm glad to get this far and I'm happy with the tennis I am playing, so my first meeting with Iva will be interesting."

While Kournikova was winning Jana Novotna was also surviving an early fright to beat Mary Joe Fernandez in three sets on court number one. Earlier in the day a couple of the more predictable quarter-finalists took steps in the right direction with doubles partners Hingis and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario both coasting into the last eight in highly convincing style.

Hingis came up against world number 19, Sabine Appelmans who is no stranger to this stage of a Grand Slam. In fact she has become a bit of a fourth round regular over the years. It's just that with the exception of this year's Australian Open, where she was beaten in the quarter-finals by Mary Pierce, she has never strayed any further.

For a while, yesterday, she seemed to think she had already over-stayed her welcome with the 25-year-old Belgian left-hander more or less capitulating in a first set - she managed to take only the sixth game - that lasted just 27 minutes out on court.

In the second set Appelmans did enough to salvage some pride, holding on for 3-3 without any slip ups. At that stage, Hingis stepped up her own game to break twice in three games and then clinch her place in the last eight.

Sanchez Vicario, meanwhile, continued her outstanding run of form in these championships by beating Pierce to one and three in another one sided match. A beaten finalist for the past two years here, the Spaniard looks determined to go one better in the absence of Steffi Graf. In this latest outing she ran the ninth seed ragged from start to finish and completed her first victory against the Frenchwoman since the 1994 French Open after just under 80 minutes on court.