COTFORD St Luke's British number one Lucy Shuker moved up to eighth in the world rankings after beating the world number two to reach the semi-finals of the Swiss Open Wheelchair Tennis Championships in Geneva.

Seventh seed Shuker had a first round bye at the ITF One Series event and began her challenge by edging a difficult opening match against Korean Myung-Hee Hwang in a final set tie-break.

Shuker came up against world number two Florence Gravellier of France in the quarter-finals, having only managed to take one game off Gravellier in each of their previous two career meetings.

The Briton asserted herself late on in the first set but Gravellier worked her way back in to the contest, taking the seccond set without dropping a game. Shuker regrouped and turned previous form on its head when she breezed through the final set to seal a 7-5, 0-6, 6-1 victory.

After the biggest single win of her career Shuker was unable to produce another shock result in Saturday's semi-finals and slipped to a 6-0, 6-2 defeat at the hands of third seed and world number four Sharon Walraven of the Netherlands.

Meanwhile, her doubles challenge also came to an end in the semi-finals when Shuker and Belgium's Annick Sevenans lost out 6-2, 7-5 to Hwang and fellow Korean Young-Suk Hong.

Shuker went in to the Swiss Open at a career high world ranking of nine, just over 100 points behing world eight-placed Maaike Smit of the Netherlands.

Shuker now has a month at home before returning to the NEC Wheelchair Tennis Tour in the United States, where she will build up to October's US Open Wheelchair Tennis Championships, the fourth and final tournament of the year to have Super Series status, the equivalent of Grand Slam.