Inglis, who has been plying her trade in the tier below the WTA Tour, might have been handed a walkover, but she’s unlikely to be feeling rusty when she faces Swiatek.<\/p>\n
She has been playing singles, doubles and mixed doubles – alongside her fiance Jason Kubler – and spent 16 hours and 12 minutes on court over the past 12 days.<\/p>\n
“Once you get out there and playing, and you want it so bad, it’s crazy what you can do,” Inglis said.<\/p>\n
Second seed Swiatek, in comparison, has played just over five hours of tennis – a heavy workload by her own standards.<\/p>\n
The Pole has endured a mixed start to the tournament as she bids to complete the career Grand Slam.<\/p>\n
Swiatek squeezed past 31st seed Anna Kalinskaya with an error-strewn performance on Saturday, while she grappled with her serve and committed 34 unforced errors in her first-round match against Chinese qualifier Yuan Yue.<\/p>\n
Inglis, too, has also had to battle her way through the early rounds.<\/p>\n
Four of her five singles matches – across both qualifying and the main draw – have gone to three sets, while she’s played six tie-breaks.<\/p>\n
And her emotion spilled out when she beat Germany’s Laura Siegemund in a marathon second-round match, falling to the court in tears after more than three hours of play.<\/p>\n
“I haven’t been in the main draw of a Grand Slam for a long time,” Inglis said after that victory.<\/p>\n
“To be in a Grand Slam in Melbourne – it’s my favourite tournament. My family is here. Jason was right there. To be able to share the wins with them is crazy and so special.<\/p>\n
“I’m just going to soak it all in. It’s not every day you’re in the third round of a Grand Slam.”<\/p>\n
Reaching the fourth round is rarer still, and the quarter-finals would be bordering on a fairytale. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Inglis, who has been plying her trade in the tier below the WTA Tour, might have been handed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-430217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}