Bernard Tomic’s run at the grass-court event in Eastbourne ended with a quarter-final loss to second seed Gilles Simon on Thursday.

Tomic missed out on reaching a first semi-final since winning his maiden title in Sydney in January as he fell 7-6 (10-8) 6-3 to the Frenchman.

Despite the defeat, 20-year-old Tomic will take encouragement from his performance at Eastbourne ahead of Wimbledon next week.

He posted back-to-back wins for the first time since February and was not seriously hampered by a hamstring injury suffered during a first-round French Open loss.

With his father and coach John Tomic watching on again from the stands, the world No.64 started brightly as he won his opening service game to love.

Neither player was seriously troubled on serve for most of the set, although a few low-flying seagulls proved a nuisance on a cool evening in the seaside town on England’s south coast.

Tomic missed a great chance to steal the set when he faced two set points up 5-4 on Simon’s serve.

The Frenchman rallied back and broke the next game but Tomic dug deep to break back send the set into a tiebreak.

The Australian fought back from 5-1 down before Simon clinched the set.

Simon was leading 4-1 in the second set when rain forced a brief delay but he needed only another 10 minutes to wrap up victory when play resumed.

World No.17 Simon will face Italian seventh seed Andreas Seppi in the semi-finals while Croatian Ivan Dodig meets Spain’s Feliciano Lopez on the other side of the draw.

The defeat ended Australian involvement at the tournament after Samantha Stosur and Marinko Matosevic lost in the earlier rounds.