Wimbledon 2012: Luke Saville takes out home hope Luke Bambridge

Australia's Luke Saville is a nice guy but you would think he has something against Britain, the way he relishes knocking out the country's top juniors here. Not content with beating Liam Broady to win the title 12 months ago, the top seed took out another home hope, Luke Bambridge, with a 7-6, 6-4 win to move into the quarter-finals. It was rough on Bambridge, a 17-year-old who shows plenty of promise. Delayed by the rain of previous days, the Briton had been forced to play two matches in one day and though he did well to get past Maximilian Marterer of Germany, once the first set had gone to Saville in the tiebreak, it was a task too far. It is 38 years since anyone defended their boys' title here – the American Billy Martin was the last to do it – but Saville looks determined to match him. The Australian, already a two-time junior grand slam winner, will now play Nikola Milojevic of Serbia for a place in the last four. Saville is already making solid progress in the men's game, moving inside the world's top 600, but that could well have been much higher had it not been for an administrative mishap. As is tradition for the junior champion, he was given a wildcard into the qualifying competition but had forgotten to withdraw from a Futures Tour (two rungs below the ATP Tour) event in Germany. Under the rules, he was then not allowed to play an event in the same week. "It was a long story, a bit of a mix-up," he said. "It was very, very unfortunate. I was bitterly disappointed for a few days but that's in the past now." Saville had been hoping to see if he could emulate the performance of another Australian Open junior champion, Bernard Tomic, who made it through to the quarter-finals here last year. "To make it a bit more disappointing, I was playing exceptionally well the day before qualifying," Saville said. ''Who knows if I could have made it through or won a round here or there, but I was feeling very, very good and then that mix-up happened." Bambridge's defeat ended British interest in the singles events, a few hours after defeats for Broady and Katy Dunne. Broady's hopes of going one better than last year were dashed 7-6, 6-3 by Frenchman Enzo Couacaud. The left-handed Broady held his own for the first set but once the tiebreak had gone against him, he was always up against it. The 17-year-old Dunne, the only Briton in the girls' event, was beaten Nigina Abduraimova of Uzbekistan in round two. The girls' top seed Taylor Townsend, a left-handed American dubbed the next Serena Williams, was upset 6-4, 6-3 by 15-year-old Canadian Francoise Abanda, a rising star on the junior circuit. After winning the junior title at the Australian Open, Townsend said she hoped to go on to win several senior grand slams but she is still 16 and time is on her side.