The Top 10 women's tennis players in the world hail from 10 different countries, which is why the surge of Czech players into the second week of Wimbledon is an unexpected curiosity.
For the first time in the Open era, four women from the Czech Republic - and none from the United States, Great Britain, Spain and Italy, among many others - reached the round of 16, all of them in the same half of the draw.
On Monday, as the field began to narrow to the quarterfinals, three Czechs marched on. At least one will reach the semifinals, because two Czechs play in one quarterfinal.
Another player in the final 16, Zarina Diyas, was born in Kazakhstan but moved to Prague when she was 5 and was raised there.
Given that there are no grass courts in the Czech Republic, and most players spend winters playing on indoor hard courts and summers on clay, this is a bit of a Wimbledon anomaly.
'Good, right?' Barbora Zahlavova Strycova said late last week of the Czech Republic's success, which was not matched by the men, none of whom reached the fourth round. 'We are great. It seems like we feel good on grass. I'm very happy. We're such a small country. We have really good players.'
Czech women certainly have a strong history in tennis. The lineage is anchored by Martina Navratilova, who was born in Prague and later became an American citizen, winning 18 Grand Slam singles titles along the way, including nine at Wimbledon. Other world No. 1s, such as Hana Mandlikova and Jana Novotna, the 1998 Wimbledon winner, followed.
The current wave is deeper, but not extraordinarily so. Only No. 6 Petra Kvitova is ranked in the Top 23, and only five Czech women are in the Top 100.
Kvitova, the best of the Czechs and the 2011 Wimbledon winner, beat unseeded Shuai Peng on Monday, 6-3, 6-2, in a match delayed by midday rain for a couple of hours, like all others not played under the retractable roof of Centre Court.
Kvitova will meet Zahlavova Strycova in the quarterfinals. Zahlavova Strycova continued her surprising burst through the tournament, following her third-round victory over Li Na with a fourth-round one over Caroline Wozniacki, the former No. 1.
At the same time, No. 23 Lucie Safarova beat her countrywoman Tereza Smitkova in two sets to make the quarterfinals, too. The 6-0, 6-2 match took just 48 minutes.
The Czech players have uncommonly close ties. Kvitova's warmup partner is Smitkova, and she trains at the same facility as Safarova and No. 6 Tomas Berdych in Prostejov. Success has proved contagious. Czech women won the Fed Cup in 2011 and 2012; Czech men won the 2013 Davis Cup, though none of them advanced past the third round here.
More than any of the women, Zahlavova Strycova, 28, has become an unlikely emergent star . A longtime Top 100 player, she has with one career tournament victory, at Quebec City in 2011. She arrived at Wimbledon in familiar fashion -- unseeded and ranked 43rd. The only sign that her game was on the upswing was a runner-up finish on grass at Birmingham, her best result of the season.
Her victory over Li was her first over a Top 13 player. Beating Wozniacki, currently ranked 16th, on a stage such as Wimbledon might now be as her second-best win.
Wozniacki had another disappointing Wimbledon, where she has never reached the quarterfinals. She was dogged last week by questions about her May breakup with the golfer Rory McIlroy, but smiled through most of them. Days after the split was made public, he won a tournament, and she lost in the first round of the French Open, leading to suggestions that the fracture had affected her game.
Late last week, Wozniacki politely but pointedly said that she was not a victim, hoping to end the lingering fallout. Her absence from the rest of Wimbledon will stop the questions, if only temporarily.
In February 2013, Zahlavova Strycova was handed a six-month suspension by the International Tennis Federation for violating anti-doping rules. Tests the previous fall found a positive result for the banned stimulant and weight-loss drug sibutramine, banned in the United States because of worries about side effects that can include heart attack and stroke.
Zahlavova Strycova denied any intent, but was required to return prize money and lost ranking points. The suspension was back-dated to the time of the test, and Zahlavova Strycova considered retiring. In the end, she said she found time to round out her interests, allowing her to appreciate tennis.
'I'm not happy what happened, but I took off and I didn't focus on tennis at all,' she said. 'I didn't follow any results. I also lived a normal life. It was good for me.'
Given what is happening at Wimbledon, it was good for her whole country.
The soft spritz of rain that washed out about six hours of play on Saturday was long gone, but its effect was still evident on Monday's schedule. Remnants of the third round had yet to be completed, a concern to those on both sides of the divide to the fourth round.
For those with third-round matches to complete, it meant the possibility of playing five matches in seven days should a championship run occur. For those already into the fourth round, they had to await the stragglers - Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal among them. I t meant an extra day off on Monday, and the possibility of a compressed schedule beyond.
Kei Nishokori, seeded No. 10, finished off Simone Bolelli, and Stan Wawrinka beat Denis Istomin.
Two women's matches, cut short on Saturday, came to quick conclusions. Sabine Lisicki, last year's Wimbledon finalist and a grass-court powerhouse, reached the quarterfinals, as she has her previous four appearances, with a three-set victory over No. 9 Ana Ivanovic. Lisicki's middling results the rest of the season kept her undervalued as a contender, and she arrived as a sneaky No. 19 seed.
Canada's rising star Eugenie Bouchard, seeded 13th, ended the run of France's Alize Cornet with a 7-6(5), 7-5 victory, to claim another quarterfinal slot. Cornet, seeded 25th, had knocked out No. 1 Serena Williams in the third round.
Madison Keys, the last American woman remaining in the tournament, withdrew after warm-ups before resuming her match with Yaroslava Shvedova.
Keys, 19, had sustained a thigh injury midway through the second set late Saturday, bringing her to tears, and Sunday's day off was not enough to heal what was diagnosed as an adductor strain. Keys had lost a first-set tiebreak, and was about to begin a second-set one, when darkness stopped play.
Keys said the injury is not serious, but Sunday was not enough time for it to heal.
'It's definitely not how I want to be leaving Wimbledon, but it happens,' she said. 'You know, you just have to take it in stride, just accept it, just try to get better.'
American women, including Venus and Serena Williams, were 0-5 in the third round.
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