\n<\/p>\n
Aryna Sabalenka has extended her reign \u200cas tiebreak queen to book a fourth successive appearance in the Australian Open quarterfinals before Carlos Alcaraz reached the \u200dlast eight with a Tommy \u200dPaul takedown.<\/p>\n
Third-seeded Coco Gauff also advanced to her third quarterfinals in a row on Sunday with a pulsating 6-1, 3-6, 6-3 win over crafty Czech Karolina Muchova in a late-afternoon match at Margaret Court Arena.<\/p>\n
list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/p>\n The day\u2019s biggest upset was veteran Daniil Medvedev\u2019s straight-sets exit at the hands of Learner Tien.<\/p>\n A day after blistering heat caused mayhem and meltdowns at Melbourne Park, normal service resumed as a cool change brought relief for players, \u2060fans and tournament schedulers.<\/p>\n Two-time champion and title favourite Sabalenka was first out, seeing off Canada\u2019s 19-year-old talent Victoria Mboko 6-1, \u200b7-6(1) in a match of two halves.<\/p>\n The Belarusian was at her irrepressible best as she crushed the teen \u200din a 31-minute opening set and raced to a 4-1 lead in the second before Mboko produced a thrilling fightback.<\/p>\n Breaking Sabalenka twice on the way to a 6-5 lead, Mboko then hit a brick wall as the Belarusian raised her game to notch a 20th successive tiebreak win at Grand Slams.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s incredible \u200dto see these kids \u2060coming up on tour,\u201d said world number one Sabalenka, who has now booked 13 successive Grand Slam quarterfinals.<\/p>\n \u201cShe pushed me really hard today.\u201d<\/p>\n Having taken down one young gun, Sabalenka gets a shot at another in the quarters against 18-year-old American Iva Jovic, who thrashed Kazakh veteran Yulia Putintseva 6-0, 6-1 at John Cain Arena, two days after dumping out seventh-seeded Jasmine Paolini.<\/p>\n Jovic is the youngest player to reach the women\u2019s quarterfinals at the Australian Open without dropping a set since Venus Williams in 1998.<\/p>\n Iva Jovic will face Aryna Sabalenka in the quarterfinals [Martin Keep\/AFP]<\/p>\n The men\u2019s tournament has seen few surprises of the magnitude of Mboko and Jovic with the last 16 shut out by seeded players for the first time at any Grand Slam in the professional era.<\/p>\n Top-seeded Alcaraz did his bit \u200bin preserving the status quo despite facing arguably his toughest test of this tournament against 19th-seeded \u200cPaul, a semifinalist in 2023.<\/p>\n For all of Paul\u2019s credentials, Alcaraz appeared in cruise control in a 7-6(6), 6-4, 7-5 win in the afternoon sun at Rod Laver Arena.<\/p>\n Once a stubborn matchup for Alcaraz, Paul has now lost on three Grand Slam surfaces to the Spaniard after last year\u2019s quarterfinal thrashing at the French Open \u200cand his 2024 loss at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n \u201cI guess the way that I would describe it is, you know, he kind of, like, suffocates you in a way,\u201d Paul said of Alcaraz.<\/p>\n \u201cHe makes you feel \u200clike you have no time.\u201d<\/p>\n Carlos Alcaraz was pushed to two tie-breakers by Tommy Paul in their fourth-round match [Izhar Khan\/AP]<\/p>\n Two-time Grand Slam champion Gauff saw three match points slip through her fingers before prevailing in a proper scrap against 19th-seeded Muchova, a former semifinalist.<\/p>\n Gauff emerged the winner with a 6-1, 3-6, \u200d6-3 scoreline.<\/p>\n \u201cShe definitely elevated her game, and I thought I was \u200csometimes a bit passive,\u201d said Gauff, who will meet the winner of the match between Elina Svitolina and Mirra Andreeva in the quarters.<\/p>\n \u201cI am really happy to get through this one today.<\/p>\n \u201cI think today I didn\u2019t panic. \u2026 I knew I just had to capitalise on those chances in the \u200dthird set, and I did that.\u201d<\/p>\n Coco Gauff celebrates after beating Karolina Muchova [William West\/AFP]<\/p>\n Later in the day, last \u200cyear\u2019s runner-up Alexander Zverev stayed on track in his bid for \u200dan elusive maiden Grand \u200dSlam title, beating Francisco Cerundolo 6-2, 6-4, 6-4 to reach the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n The 28-year-old German has lost all three Grand Slam title clashes he has contested, including last year\u2019s final to Jannik Sinner at \u2060Melbourne Park, and has flown under the radar this time as he seeks another opportunity.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m \u200bvery happy with the match and the performance. Really happy to be \u200dback in the quarterfinals,\u201d Zverev said on court, dodging a question on whether he is playing his best tennis.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to jinx it. I\u2019ll keep my mouth shut. But you have to play at \u200da high level \u2060to reach the quarterfinals. I hope to continue the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n Zverev will face American Tien, who overcame a nosebleed \u200din the \u200dopening set to school Medvedev 6-4, 6-0, 6-3 in a late session.<\/p>\n Tien \u200dupset Medvedev in the second round at the Australian Open last year in an epic five-setter that lasted \u200dnearly five \u2060hours, but this time, he wrapped up the contest in just an hour and 42 minutes on Margaret Court Arena.<\/p>\n Tien took a medical timeout 10 minutes into the fourth-round encounter as \u200bhe stuffed tissues up his \u200cnose, but that did little to stop his dominance on court as he left Medvedev looking utterly lost \u200con numerous rallies.<\/p>\n Medvedev had said he did not like playing \u200cTien after a trilogy of \u2060matches that went the distance last year, and the 20-year-old proved him right with a clinical performance \u200cthat included 33 winners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Aryna Sabalenka has extended her reign \u200cas tiebreak queen to book a fourth successive appearance in the Australian Open quarterfinals before Carlos Alcaraz reached the \u200dlast eight with a Tommy \u200dPaul takedown. Third-seeded Coco Gauff also advanced to her third quarterfinals in a row on Sunday with a pulsating 6-1, 3-6, 6-3 win over crafty<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42682,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[1255,2059,1980,10960,150,3866,20865,11718,1262],"class_list":{"0":"post-42681","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-alcaraz","9":"tag-australian","10":"tag-book","11":"tag-gauff","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-open","14":"tag-quarterfinals","15":"tag-sabalenka","16":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}