MELBOURNE, Australia \u2014 Limping and desperately trying to stretch out cramps in his arms and legs, Jannik Sinner had just gone down a break in the third set when the extreme heat rules saved him.<\/p>\n
Play was suspended for eight minutes while the roof was closed on Rod Laver Arena on Saturday afternoon, and the\u00a0two-time defending Australian Open champion\u00a0returned a revitalized man.<\/p>\n
After being on the verge of an unlikely exit \u2014 one of his coaches, Darren Cahill, was urging the 24-year-old Italian just to stick it out for a few more games \u2014 Sinner won five of the next six games to take the set against No. 85-ranked Eliot Spizzirri.<\/p>\n
Another 10-minute “cooling break” between the third and fourth sets followed \u2014 an allowance under the\u00a0extreme heat policy\u00a0\u2014 and Sinner returned for a 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 victory that highlighted a dramatic contrast of intense light and shade.<\/p>\n
\u201cI struggled physically today. I got lucky with the heat rule,” Sinner said, agreeing that the cooler indoor conditions suited him much more than the energy-sapping heat of the first two sets. \u201cI try to stay calm even in a moment like this. If he keeps playing the way he was playing, maybe I was dropping a little bit, maybe my tournament was over today. I don\u2019t know.”<\/p>\n
Spizzirri was magnanimous about it, adding: \u201c\u00a0That\u2019s the rules\u00a0of the game, and, you know, you got to live with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Novak Djokovic\u00a0became the first player ever to notch\u00a0400 match wins at the majors\u00a0when he beat Botic van de Zandschulp 6-3, 6-4, 7-6 (4) in a night match.<\/p>\n
The\u00a024-time major winner\u00a0improved his win-loss record to 102-10 at the Australian Open, equaling Roger Federer\u2019s career haul for the most-ever match wins at the season\u2019s first major.<\/p>\n
Two-time Australian Open champion\u00a0Naomi Osaka withdrew because of an abdominal injury\u00a0before her scheduled third-round match against Australian qualifier Maddison Inglis, ending a campaign\u00a0noted strikingly for fashion\u00a0and\u00a0friction.<\/p>\n
That sent Inglis into a fourth-round match against No. 2-ranked Iga \u015awi\u0105tek, who had a 6-1, 1-6, 6-1 win over Anna Kalinskaya.<\/p>\n
No. 4 Amanda Anisimova beat Peyton Stearns 6-1, 6-4 in an all-American encounter and will next face Wang Xinyu, who upset No. 13 Linda Noskova.<\/p>\n
No. 5 Elena Rybakina advanced to a fourth-round match against No. 21 Elise Mertens.<\/p>\n
The 40-year-old Stan Wawrinka lost 7-6 (5), 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 to No. 9 Taylor Fritz and then grabbed two beers from a courtside ice box, cracked the cans with the tournament director and bid farewell to the crowd.\u00a0\u201cCheers everybody!\u00a0\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Fritz will next face No. 5 Lorenzo Musetti, who held off Tomas Machac 5-7, 6-4, 6-2, 5-7, 6-2 to become the third Italian man to reach the fourth round.<\/p>\n
No. 8 Ben Shelton beat Valentin Vacherot of Monaco, 6-4, 6-4, 7-6 (5) on Margaret Court Arena and said having the roof closed \u201cjust amplified the noise.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 37-year-old Marin Cilic, U.S. Open champion in 2014 and Australian Open runner-up four years later, lost in four sets to father-to-be Casper Ruud.<\/p>\n
An earlier start than usual\u00a0on Day 7 was no worries for defending champion Madison Keys and Jessica Pegula. No. 9-seeded Keys beat Karolina Pliskova 6-3, 6-3 and No. 6 Pegula defeated Oksana Selekhmeteva 6-3, 6-2.<\/p>\n
Next up for the two Americans,\u00a0and podcast pals, is a fourth-round encounter against each other.<\/p>\n
Play was suspended on outside courts for five hours from the mid-afternoon until around 7:30 p.m. local time.<\/p>\n
The temperature was around 35 degrees Celsius when the tournament\u2019s so-called heat scale hit a maximum of 5 in the mid-afternoon. The temperature Saturday didn\u2019t quite reach the forecast maximum of 40 degrees Celsius. The maximum forecast for Sunday is 24 C.<\/p>\n
Sinner will next play fellow Italian Luciano Darderi, who beat No. 15 Karen Khachanov 7-6 (5), 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on his drama at 3-1 down in the third set, the No. 2 seed said he was just trying to survive.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt started with the legs. Got to the arms. I was cramping a bit all over,\u201d Sinner said. \u201cThis is an area I know I need to improve.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the second set, Sinner was given a rare time violation by chair umpire Fergus Murphy as he was preparing to serve. In a show of sportsmanship, Spizzirri intervened, approaching the umpire and saying he hadn’t been ready to receive.<\/p>\n
He had the crowd on his side, until Sinner’s movement became visibly wobbly.<\/p>\n
Under the roof \u2014 with the glare gone, the temperature easing across the third and fourth sets and the radiated heat from the court plummeting \u2014 the momentum swung.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if he got saved by it,\u201d Spizzirri said. \u201cI smiled a little bit when the heat rule went into effect, just because it was kind of funny timing. But at the same time, the game at 2-1 in the third set was when it hit, I think it\u2019s 5 (on the heat scale), which means that the heat rule is in effect. So whenever that game was over, whether I broke or whether he held, we were going to close the roof.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MELBOURNE, Australia \u2014 Limping and desperately trying to stretch out cramps in his arms and legs, Jannik Sinner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-431255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}