Defending champ Sabalenka moves into quarterfinals

Associated Press

Melbourne: Aryna Sabalenka has advanced to the quarterfinals at the Australian Open, where she's three wins from achieving something no woman has done since the 1990s. The two-time defending champion extended her winning streak at Melbourne Park to 18 matches with a 6-1 6-2 win over 14th-seeded Mirra Andreeva to open play Sunday on Rod Laver Arena. Martina Hingis, from 1997 to 1999, was the last woman to win three straight Australian Open singles titles. Sabalenka hugged Andreeva after the match, waved to the crowd, took a photo with her Polaroid camera and gave a thumbs up to mark the occasion. She's won 24 consecutive sets in Melbourne.

"I'm super happy to get through this difficult match in straight sets," she said. It was over in just over an hour. Apart from the fifth game of the second set, when Sabalenka has triple breakpoint but Andreeva rallied by winning five straight points to hold, just about everything went the way of the No. 1-ranked player. Sabalenka didn't face a break point until midway through the second set, when she saved three in one game.

It seemed like she was testing her serve under pressure. No. 3 Coco Gauff, who has won all 16 sets she's played this year, was playing Tokyo Olympic champion Belinda Bencic in the second match on Rod Laver on Day 8. On the men's side, No. 3 Carlos Alcaraz was playing Jack Draper in the afternoon and Novak Djokovic was continuing his quest for a record 25th Grand Slam singles title in a night match against Jiri Lehecka.

Bopanna-Shuai enter mixed doubles quarterfinal

Veteran Indian tennis player Rohan Bopanna and his Chinese parnter Zhang Shuai entered the quarterfinals of the mixed doubles event at the Australian Open after they got a walkover in a second round match here on Sunday.

Bopanna and Shuai were up against fourth seeds Taylor Townsend of the United States and Hugo Nys of Monaco but the Indian-Chinese pair moved to the last eight round without taking the court. Bopanna and Shuai will next play the winner of the match between Hungary's Timea Babos and El Salvador's Marcelo Arevalo, and, the Australian combination of Olivia Gadecki and John Peers. The Indo-Chinese pair had earlier defeated Kristina Mladenovic of France and Ivan Dodic of Croatia 6-4 6-4 in its opening match.

Daniil Medvedev fined $76,000

Daniil Medvedev has been fined a total of $76,000 for his camera and racket smashing outbursts during the first two rounds of the Australian Open. The fines were published on Sunday by Australian Open organisers, two days after Medvedev's unexpected second-round exit. The 2021 US Open champion destroyed a tiny camera hanging in the net by repeatedly smacking it with his racket during a surprisingly difficult, five-set, first-round win over Kasidit Samrej, who was ranked 418th.

He was fined $10,000 for the first-round infringement. Medvedev was penalised a point during his second-round loss to 19-year-old American qualifier Learner Tien for showing similar signs of frustration. He was fined $66,000 for his second-round code violations. After getting broken to trail 4-3 in the second set when Tien delivered a lob that landed at the baseline, Medvedev chucked his equipment toward the sideline, skidding it across the court until it reached an advertising panel near his bench. At other moments of anger, Medvedev hit a ball against the back wall, toppled a camera behind a baseline and punched his racket bag.

He also voiced displeasure about being called for two consecutive foot-faults, resulting in a double-fault, during the second-set tiebreaker. The 4-hour, 49-minute second-round contest ended shortly before 3 am on Friday. Medvedev was seeded No. 5 at Melbourne Park, where he was the runner-up in three of the past four years, including 12 months ago.