Britain's Kyle Edmund reacts after defeating Bulgaria's Grigor Dimitrov. Photo / AP.
Britain's Kyle Edmund reacts after defeating Bulgaria's Grigor Dimitrov. Photo / AP.
After a night of upsets that saw Hyeon Chung topple Novak Djokovic and Tennys Sandgren defeat Dominic Thiem, the top men's seeds will want to see normality resume when they take to the court on Tuesday.
Fresh from his four-set win over Nick Kyrgios on Sunday night, World No. 3 Grigor Dimitrov takes on Brit Kyle Edmund this afternoon on Rod Laver Arena. Kyrgios told the Bulgarian to "believe" as he shoots for his first major crown while Edmund will be hoping he has enough gas left in the tank after playing two five-setters and a four-setter in his past three matches.
Top seed Rafael Nadal surrendered his first set of the tournament to Diego Schwartzman in his last start and will be wary of Marin Cilic, who came back from a set down to defeat Pablo Carreno Busta in the round of 16.
On the women's side 22-year-old Elise Mertens can continue her dream run at Melbourne Park with victory over World No. 4 Elina Svitolina and Caroline Wozniacki — fresh from hitting her first ever successful tweener in a match — may need to pull out some more tricks to overcome veteran Carla Suarez Navarro.
Kyle Edmund has won through to his first grand slam semi-final in an incredible quarter-final against No. 3 seed Grigor Dimitrov.
In the biggest result in Edmund's career, the world No. 48 finished off an incredible performance 6-4 3-6 6-3 6-4.
In a rollercoaster of a match, the most outrageous drama was saved for the end.
With Dimitrov serving at 4-4 in the fourth set, the incredible match hit fever-pitch when Edmund called for a review on a ball that was called good by the linesman.
With scores at 30-15, Dimitrov's groundstroke appeared to catch the line on the umpire's side of Rod Laver Arena in what appeared to be a clean winner.
However, Edmund challenged the call — and insanity ensued.
The Hawkeye technology display on the big screen inside Rod Laver Arena showed Dimitrov's shot landed right next to the line — and on first glimpse appeared impossible to discern if the line had been caught or not.
The call was so close the Hawkeye display failed and did not show any indication on the big screen if the shot has wide or not.
It eventually took the graphic zooming in on the line to see that the ball sailed wide by just 1mm.
"Oh, my. They haven't put the words on the (screen), but it is out by 1mm we're being told," Jim Courier told Channel 7.
"There it is. He is having to take a step back after that drama. My goodness, as if it needed any more.
"At 15-30. Now it is 15-40. Two break point chances for Edmund."
Elise Mertens' golden run at Melbourne Park continues as she annihilated Elina Svitolina 6-4 6-0 in a huge upset.
The unseeded Belgian was brilliant and the World No. 4 was terrible, making 19 unforced errors in the pair's quarter-final clash.
Mertens took 32 minutes to wrap up the second set after overcoming a bout of nerves in an opening set that presented a much tougher challenge.
The Belgian broke twice in the first set to take the lead against Svitolina, hitting 16 winners to eight.
Before today Mertens had never played in a grand-slam quarter-final and she's now gone one better by advancing into the semi-finals where she will face the winner of tonight's Caroline Wozniacki vs Carla Suarez Navarro match.
The victory over Svitolina — one of the tournament favourites — is Mertens' first win against a player ranked in the top five, while the Ukrainian is still yet to reach the final four of a major.
"Svitolina has to walk away from this match ... and start asking herself the questions of why does this keep happening at grand slam level?," Channel Seven commentator Rennae Stubbs said..
"This is a number of times we have seen her come into a grand slam where she is playing really well, a bit of expectation on her shoulders and she just cannot get over this hump."
Per ESPN's Chris McKendry, Mertens' win means this is the 10th straight grand slam with an unseeded women's semi-finalist.
In fields with 32 seeds, this is 10th straight Grand Slam event with an unseeded women’s semifinalist. Unreal. #Mertens#ausopen
Mischa Zverev has been fined $US45,000 for retiring in the second set of his opening round match against Hyeon Chung, per the New York Times' Ben Rothenberg.
He had to give up nearly all of his $US47,000 prizemoney for making the first round because of a "poor first round performance".
The punishment comes after the tournament introduced a new rule designed to prevent injured players taking the court in round one, retiring and still leaving with their entire pay cheque.
To discourage unfit stars taking the court at the start of the tournament when they know there's a strong chance they won't be able to see out the match, the Australian Open guaranteed players half of their prizemoney if they pulled out before the first round.
This was floated as a reason for Zverev being the only player to retire in round one — the lowest retirements ever seen at a grand slam in 10 years.
Mystery solved: the big pending penalty was for Mischa Zverev, fined a massive US $45,000 (FORTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS!) for a poor “first round performance.”
That’s almost all of his prize money, which was around US $47,000 (60,000 AUD).
Nick Kyrgios has been fined nearly $2500 for not being ready to start his third round match against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga on time.
The umpire slapped Kyrgios with a code violation because he wasn't prepared to start the first point within one minute of the five minute warm-up period ending.
It's the second time the Aussie has been hit in the hip pocket this tournament. He had to fork out more than $3700 for telling hecklers in the stands to "shut the f*** up" during his opening round win over Rogerio Dutra Silva.
Bryan brothers march on
Bob and Mike Bryan have kept their hopes of a 17th grand slam title alive after demolishing Marcin Matkowski and Aisam-Ul-Haq-Qureshi in straight sets.
The American duo took one hour and six minutes to wrap up the 6-1 6-4 victory on Rod Laver Arena. Matkowski and Qureshi did well to keep the No. 6 seeds on court for as long as they did after an opening set bloodbath that suggested things were going to get ugly.
The Bryan brothers led 5-0 after only 16 minutes before their opponents finally got on the board, and the No. 15 seeds provided a much tougher test in the second set, although their resilience had no impact on the result.
Will Smith made waves in Melbourne when he watched on courtside as Nick Kyrgios defeated Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the third round, but he hasn't won over everyone.
Channel Seven presenter Melanie McLaughlin took a cheeky jab at the Hollywood icon for his role in a video alongside Aussie wheelchair tennis star Dylan Alcott.
The broadcaster played a video of Alcott and Smith together boasting how they would be the most formidable doubles pairing in the world right before McLaughlin interviewed Alcott's Australian Open doubles partner Heath Davidson.
U.S. actor Will Smith reacts after watching the third round match between France's Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Australia's Nick Kyrgios. Photo / AP.
Davidson teams up with Alcott again at the year's first major, the pair having won a gold medal in the men's quad doubles at the 2016 Rio Olympics, but you'd think it was out of sight out of mind for the 30-year-old in Alcott's funny clip.
"I apologise to our next guest for what we just saw with two, well I guess he's going to say nobodies, I don't know who they were," McLaughlin joked.
"Heath Davidson — the man who's proudly responsible for one of the gold medals Dylan Alcott won — I'm sorry you had to listen to that."
Davidson then took a sly pot shot at Alcott himself.
"Dylan just completely threw me under the bus there, giving me no credit and ditching me for Will Smith," Davidson said. "He's all about stardom which is alright but I'm all about winning tournaments."
Obviously, the exchange was all in good fun and McLaughlin and Davidson were only kidding.
Still, we wonder what will hurt Smith more — being called a "nobody" or Kyrgios saying he always watches the movie Focus , but only because Margot Robbie stars in it?
'Kim Jong-un beat him 6-0 6-0'
Channel Seven has copped heat for the amount of cross promotion and advertising during its coverage but Nathan Templeton did his best to restore people's faith in the network with a funny one-liner to cap off his take on Hyeon Chung on radio on Tuesday morning.
Templeton is at Melbourne Park for the broadcaster and couldn't help himself when speaking to SEN Breakfast about Chung's incredible upset over Novak Djokovic on Monday night. He saw an opening and he went for it right at the end of his chat.
"Just quickly on Chung, while he has become a bit of a star he's not the best player on the Korean peninsula," Templeton said. "Apparently Kim Jung-un beat him 6-0 6-0."
Chung is South Korean and Kim Jung-un is the dictator of North Korea, but the joke still stands. Advantage, Mr Templeton.
Earlier in the same segment the topic of Rafael Nadal's grunting was raised. Grunting came into the spotlight when Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka played Aussie Ash Barty, attracting criticism for the volume and timing of her grunts, which some said was a tactic to put the Queenslander off her game.
Nadal has always been a grunter, but
"The grunting metre will be up," SEN's Garry Lyon said. "We're staggered that Sabalenka got hung, drawn and quartered and then Rafa comes out and grunts like a hairy grunter."
"Yeah it's like it's one rule for one and another rule for others, isn't it?" Templeton responded.
"He's such a likeable bloke in every other way Rafa he gets away with it but you're right. I think the thing that annoys people about Rafa is that he hits the ball and then the grunt comes a second or two later which can be a little bit distracting for the opponent because they're just about to hit the ball."
On the subject of tennis players making unnecessary noise, has Nadal upped the grunting or have I just noticed his normal level? #AusOpen
