Novak Djokovic faces Lorenzo Musetti in his quest to reach a 13th Australian Open semi-final on Wednesday, with a potential last four-clash against defending champion Jannik Sinner at stake.<\/p>\n
The 24-time major winner has been bumped from the night match on centre court to an afternoon session, with the primetime evening slot going to second seed Sinner<\/a>.<\/p>\n Italy’s Sinner meets dangerous American eighth seed Ben Shelton<\/a>, with the winners playing for a place in Sunday’s Melbourne final.<\/p>\n Iga Swiatek<\/a> takes on Elena Rybakina and Jessica Pegula tackles Amanda Anisimova<\/a> in women’s quarter-final action preceding the men on Rod Laver Arena.<\/p>\n Ten-time Australian Open champion Djokovic<\/a> got a free ride into the Musetti<\/a> showdown when rising Czech star Jakub Mensik pulled out injured, giving the 38-year-old Serb an extra day’s rest.<\/p>\n “Pretty sure he won’t be tired,” said the fifth-seeded Italian Musetti.<\/p>\n “But hopefully the rhythm that I have right now… will bring me luck for the next one. I feel ready to try to push him to his maximum.”<\/p>\n The odds are stacked against Musetti, who is into the last eight at Melbourne for the first time, with clay and grass his usual forte.<\/p>\n He has played Djokovic 10 times before – and only beaten him once, back in 2023.<\/p>\n Sinner is bidding to win the Melbourne crown for a third time in a row, something only Djokovic has done in the Open era (since 1968).<\/p>\n He has a tough opponent in Shelton, who reached the semi-finals last year – where he lost in straight sets to Sinner.<\/p>\n The pair have met nine times, with the world number two winning eight of them.<\/p>\n But Shelton is a fan favourite and is hoping to harness the energy of a “rowdy” crowd to pull off a shock.<\/p>\n “I’m definitely a competitor, I’m rowdy on court, I look forward to rowdy crowds,” he said.<\/p>\n Six-time Grand Slam champion Swiatek is chasing a maiden Melbourne title and knows the game of fifth-seeded Kazakh Rybakina well.<\/p>\n The pair, who open the day’s action, have faced each other many times, with Swiatek holding a 6-5 advantage.<\/p>\n “Every match she’s been a tough opponent, and her tennis for sure is great,” said the Polish world number two.<\/p>\n “I need to be 100 per cent ready and go for it and use my experience and also the knowledge from previous matches.”<\/p>\n Whoever wins will have sixth seed Pegula, who ousted defending champion Madison Keys, or fellow American and fourth seed Anisimova waiting for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic faces Lorenzo Musetti in his quest to reach a 13th Australian Open semi-final on Wednesday, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-395041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}