Sharapova re-dresses for success to reach fourth round

At Rod Laver Arena, the match between fifth-seeded Maria Sharapova and American Lauren Davis has gone to a deciding set after Sharapova won the first set 6-1 and Davis took the second-set tiebreaker 7-6 (5).

Williams raced to a 6-1, 6-1 win in 45 minutes over 18-year-old Russian Daria Kasatkina on Rod Laver Arena to set up a fourth-round match with Margarita Gasparyan, whom she beat early at Wimbledon last year.

It appeared the tide may be turning against Sharapova, but the 28-year-old had other ideas.

Fourth seed Agnieszka Radwanska swept past Puerto Rico’s Monica Puig Friday and into the Australian Open fourth round as she continued her relentless march towards the tournament second week.

“Is this a friendly reminder that I’m getting older?” she joked. She next plays No. 12 Belinda Bencic.

“Everything I’ve been trying to work on was kind of clicking today”, said Serena.

“I never thought that I’d be playing at this age, honestly”, said Sharapova, whose personal life remains out of bounds, although she most recently had a relationship with fellow player Grigor Dimitrov. With Sharapova down up a set but in the second set tiebreak 5-4, Federer was hoping for a quick turnaround from the Russian so he could get on court.

“Oh, wow, I’ve won 600 matches?” she said with surprise.

Bouchard, who had a long layoff late a year ago after sustaining a concussion when she slipped and fell in a dressing room at the U.S. Open, was a finalist at last week’s Hobart International after making the quarterfinals the previous week in Shenzhen, China.

“I’m really happy with the way I managed the match emotionally as it is tough to play a friend”.

She continued to pressure the Davis serve and got the break she was after in the third game of the second set. As a result, Bencic broke Bondarenko’s serve 3 times on her way to taking the set.

Belgian 15th seed David Goffin defeated friend and training partner Dominic Thiem, with the Austrian losing 6-1, 3-6, 7-6 (7-2), 7-5.

Kei Nishikori had a 7-5, 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 win over No. 26-seeded Guillermo Garcia-Lopez and will next play 2008 Australian Open finalist Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who beat fellow Frenchman Pierre-Hugues Herbert 6-4, 7-6 (7), 7-6 (4). “I felt a little lighter”, Sharapova said. Sharapova is the 17th women’s player to reach that number of career wins. Sharapova said, when an on-court interviewer congratulated her for the achievement earned by winning her third-round match Friday at the Australian Open.

He lost in the third round in his first two trips to Melbourne Park in 2000 and ’01 and again last year – in between he won the title four times and lost one final during a run of reaching the semifinals or better in 11 straight years. If I think about it like that – “Oh, I’ve been around the block, I’ve been to all these tournaments so many times” – that would seem quite heavy and would not really motivate me much.