Maria Sharapova has set up a reprise of her Wimbledon final against Petra Kvitova in the Australian Open semi-finals after both got through their quarter finals in straight sets.
Kvitova defeated the Russian in their clash in the grass court Grand Slam final last year and Sharapova, seeded four, will be looking for revenge when they meet in Thursday's semi-final.
No.2 seed Kvitova secured her berth with a hard-fought 6-4 6-4 win over unseeded Italian Sara Errani, while Sharapova, the 2008 champion here, swept aside compatriot Ekaterina Makarova 6-2 6-3.
It was far from a vintage performance from Kvitova, but she got the job done in one hour and 51 minutes to make it through to the final four in Melbourne for the first time.
It represents just the third time the 21-year-old Czech has made it to the semi-final of a Grand Slam and the first time she has achieved that feat outside the grass courts of Wimbledon.
It was a scrappy start to the match with both players dropping their opening service game and Kvitova making an extraordinary 10 unforced errors in the first two games.
The world No.2 then settled down to break the Italian in the third and seventh games and while Errani was able to stay in the set by breaking Kvitova when she was serving for it, the Czech took her chance second time around to secure the advantage.
Kvitova again got the early break in the second set, but let herself down with another run of unforced errors which allowed Errani to break back, hold easily and break her again.
The Italian raced to a 4-1 lead but just when it looked like she was about to push it to a third set, she faltered. Kvitova pounced with breaks in the seven and ninth games and put the match on her racquet.
She served it out to love to prevail in spite of a massive unforced error count (44) as compared to just 20 winners.
For Errani, it ends her best-ever Grand Slam showing, but the 24-year-old will have plenty of confidence having knocked out Nadia Petrova, Sorana Cirstea and Jie Zheng along the way.
Sharapova played typically aggressive and powerful tennis against Makarova, rifling off 26 winners to 10 to book her first semi-final appearance here since she won the tournament in 2008.
Makarova was under pressure on serve throughout the first set and while she was able to save four break points in her first service game, she was broken comfortably in the fourth game.
Sharapova then saved her own break point with an ace before securing the set when she hit a forehand winner in the eighth game.
An early break in the second set offered the world No.56 a way back in, but that seemed to fire up Sharapova once more and she took Makarova's serve in each of her next two service games.
Sharapova held match point at 5-2 on Makarova's serve and while the underdog was able to save that and two more in the subsequent game, she eventually hit a forehand long to hand her compatriot the match in 87 minutes.