The Russian produced an awesome display of power tennis to defeat her American opponent 6-3 6-3. In a match in which both players belted the ball across the net for a succession of blistering winners, the 21st seed played with far greater control on the big points and made fewer mistakes.
"I'm not supposed to say this, but I didn't really like grass at all," Pavlyuchenkova, who has struggled on the faster surface in the past, told reporters after the match. "Now it's kind of changing a little, I don't mind it."
The key was Pavlyuchenkova's miserly seven unforced errors, compared with 22 for 27th seed Vandeweghe.
So great was the American's frustration at her erratic play that, after she was broken for the second time in the second set, she gave her racket away to a delighted child in the crowd.
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Pavlyuchenkova, who turned 25 on Sunday, was one of four Russians to reach the fourth round at Wimbledon -- the most since 2009. She could now face Serena Williams in the quarter-finals, if the world number one gets through her match against Pavlyuchenkova's compatriot Svetlana Kuznetsova.
Pavlyuchenkova said there was a great spirit in the Russian camp and that the players were driving each other on to success.
"It's great, we have this competition, everyone wants to do better than the other one," she said.
(Reporting by Pravin Char, editing by Ed Osmond and Martyn Herman)
