Key events
De Minaur makes his entrance on Rod Laver. Unsurprisingly the home hope is shown a lot of love.
As we wait for De Minaur and Bublik to arrive, Zverev is zooming towards victory. Last year’s runner-up leads Argentina’s Cerundolo 6-2, 6-4, 2-3, while Medvedev is serving to stay in the first set, 5-3 down to the 20-year-old American Learner Tien.
Meanwhile our man in Melbourne, Tumaini Carayol, has this report on Alcaraz’s win:
Carlos Alcaraz continued to build momentum in his pursuit of the career grand slam as he navigated a slow start and pushed through his first test at the Australian Open to reach the quarter-finals with a 7-6 (6), 6-4, 7-5 win over the 19th seed Tommy Paul.
Alcaraz, the world No 1, has now reached the quarter-finals at Melbourne Park for three consecutive years and this is his first time doing so without dropping a set.
Having already won each of the three other grand slam tournaments twice, he will be attempting to break new ground by reaching the semi-finals of the Australian Open for the first time in his career.
Things were far from easy for Alcaraz, who has played many tough matches with Paul over the past four years, losing to the American twice in their seven meetings.
Alcaraz trailed by a break early in the first set and still could not separate himself from an impressive Paul, who served well, put pressure on the American by taking the ball early and frustrated the Spaniard with his excellent defensive skills.
You can read the rest here:
Sabalenka is on some streak in Melbourne, winning 49 of her past 54 sets, the kind of stat that puts her alongside the likes of Graf, Seles, Hingis and Serena in the Australian Open history books. How the world No 1 deals with the precocious talents of the 18-year-old Jovic in the last eight will be fascinating. It’ll be Jovic’s first grand slam quarter-final. The Californian has Serbian heritage, and Novak Djokovic believes she “has all the tools” to become “a future champion and a future No 1”.
Already today, in mercifully less extreme heat for the players, there have been wins for the two No 1s, with Carlos Alcaraz and Aryna Sabalenka again rolling on in straight sets. Sabalenka ended the breakthrough run of the 19-year-old Victoria Mboko, 6-1, 7-6, and will now face in the quarter-finals another stupendously talented teen in Iva Jovic, who backed up her win over Jasmine Paolini by routing Kazakhstan’s Yulia Putintseva, 6-0, 6-1. And the former teen phenom Coco Gauff (how is she still only 21?! It feels as if she’s been around for 10 years) came through in three sets, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3, against the classy Czech Karolina Muchova.
Preamble
G’day and welcome to the Australian Open – night session day eight! The brilliance of the first week at a grand slam is the head-spinning amount of action on offer all at once; the beauty of the second week is the focus sharpens considerably on individual matches, so this night session brings us two contests to get immersed in: Alex de Minaur v Alexander Bublik followed by Mirra Andreeva v Elina Svitolina … though Daniil Medvedev v Learner Tien has spilled over from the day session and Alexander Zverev is two sets up, 6-2, 6-4, against Francisco Cerundolo.
De Minaur, who’s in the familiar territory of being the last remaining Australian in the men’s singles, is coming up against a changed man in Bublik. De Minaur’s record against the underarm-serving Kazakhstani maverick – who once said he hated tennis “with all my heart” – read 3-0 until Bublik had a dramatic mind shift last year at the age of 27 (after a road trip to Vegas – you couldn’t make it up) and decided he no longer wanted to waste his talent.
Bublik is now in the form of his life, up to world No 10, with two wins over De Minaur and five titles during the past eight months, including in Hong Kong two weeks ago. And he hasn’t dropped a set on his way to reaching the fourth round for the first time – a stage De Minaur is playing in for the fifth straight year.
“I enjoy winning more than in previous years,” Bublik said a few days ago. “I matured and I’m treating it more like work. I came here to do things, to win matches, to do everything in my power. I have no joy of taking the third set, losing in five, yelling, breaking racquets. I don’t feel the need to do that. So I’m trying to fight.”
Fighting is something De Minaur has done his entire career, making up for his modest firepower with his relentless speed and scrapping – a description that’s also very apt for Svitolina, another full-of-heart player who hasn’t been able to make that jump to slam champion. It’s a step many believe is destined for the 18-year-old prodigy that is Andreeva, but don’t count Svitolina out today; she’s started the season just as strongly as Andreeva and, at 31, will know this is an opportunity she must do all she can to grasp.
De Minaur and Bublik will be on court at: about 7pm Melbourne time/8am GMT.
