Coco Gauff, who was still a teenager when she won her first major title in 2023, is back into the quarterfinals at the Australian Open for the third consecutive year after a 6-1, 3-6, 6-3 win over No. 19 Karolina Muchova on Sunday.<\/p>\n
She’ll next face No. 12\u00a0Elina Svitolina, who closed play on Day 8 with a 6-2, 6-4 win over 18-year-old, eighth-seeded Mirra Andreeva.<\/p>\n
No. 1-ranked Carlos Alcaraz is also in the last 8 for the third straight year, continuing his bid for a career Grand Slam at age 22 with a 7-6 (6), 6-4, 7-5 win over No. 19-seeded Tommy Paul.<\/p>\n
He’s never gone past the last eight at Melbourne Park, the only one of the four Grand Slam venues where he hasn’t won the title. That’s a statistic he’s determined to rectify, to the point where he’s\u00a0reworking his serve\u00a0to a look a little bit more in style with 10-time Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic.<\/p>\n
He’s unlikely to have the crowd behind him in the quarterfinals, where he’ll meet local hope and sixth-seeded Alex de Minaur, a 6-4, 6-1, 6-1 winner over No. 10 Alexander Bublik.<\/p>\n
No. 3 Alexander Zverev, the runner-up in Melbourne last year, beat Francisco Cerundolo 6-2, 6-4, 6-4 and will next meet\u00a020-year-old Learner Tien, the youngest men’s quarterfinalist in Australia since Nick Kyrgios in 2015. Tien, who needed treatment for a bloody nose after the third game, beat three-time Australian Open runner-up Daniil Medvedev 6-4, 6-0, 6-3.<\/p>\n
The 38-year-old\u00a0Djokovic got a walkover into the quarterfinals\u00a0after Jakub Mensik withdrew 24 hours ahead of their scheduled fourth-round match with an abdominal injury.<\/p>\n
Iva Jovic, who will face Aryna Sabalenka next on the women’s side, has been getting some good advice from Djokovic, a 24-time major winner, during the tournament. He said he’s been happy to help an up-and-coming star with Serbian heritage.<\/p>\n
Jovic made it clear last year that she wanted a chance to play the World No. 1. Now she’ll get that chance.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka, who has joked about waiting for a formal invitation to partner Djokovic in mixed doubles at a major, breezed through the first set in 31 minutes against Canada’s Victoria Mboko but had some difficulty in the second.<\/p>\n
Mboko saved match points and played well enough to beat many players, but not the two-time Australian Open champion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat an incredible player for such a young age,\u201d Sabalenka said of Mboko. \u201cIt\u2019s incredible to see these kids coming up on Tour. I can\u2019t believe I say that. I feel like I\u2019m a kid!<\/p>\n
\u201cShe pushed me so much, and I\u2019m happy to be through,\u201d Sabalenka added in her on-court TV interview.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka led the second set 4-1, and then failed to convert three match points while leading 5-4. Mboko slowly took momentum and forced a tiebreaker only for Sabalenka to dominate.<\/p>\n
It was the 20th straight tiebreaker victory \u2014 a record \u2014 for Sabalenka.<\/p>\n
\u201cI try to \u2014 not to think this is a tiebreak and play point by point,\u201d said Sabalenka, who won back-to-back titles in Australia in 2023 and \u201824 before losing last year\u2019s final to Madison Keys. \u201cI guess that\u2019s the key to consistency.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jovic and Mboko combined later Sunday in the doubles and had match points before the No. 4-seeded Elise Mertens and Zhang Shuai duo clung on in the super tiebreaker to win 7-5, 4-6, 7-6 (10).<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re both very young, very talented,\u201d Mertens said. \u201cIt was a really tough match.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff, who was still a teenager when she won her first major title in 2023, is back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-433728","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\/433728","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=433728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}