Sharapova secures 600th career win

Despite the early exit, Hewitt isn’t quite finished with Melbourne Park yet, with a second round doubles match later tonight.

Sharapova made a remarkable 33 unforced errors in the second set, which lasted 77 minutes and ended with her hitting a loose forehand on Davis’ first set point.

It was the first women’s match to go to three sets on Rod Laver Arena at this Open, with Bencic converting her third match point in just under two hours.

Small consolation, but Davis has this pleasant takeaway: In the first round, she took out No. 26 seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in three sets.

Russia-born Australian Daria Gavrilova was inspired by a raucous home crowd in Hisense Arena as she clinched a thrilling 6-4 4-6 11-9 win over Frenchwoman Kristina Mladenovic.

The No. 16-seeded Tomic had a 6-4, 6-2, 6-7 (5), 7-5 win over Simone Bolelli to reach the third round.

Martina Navratilova, with 306, is the only player to have won more than 300 matches at majors.

Australian Open 2016 from 18 January – 31 January 2016.

She took a bathroom break before the third set, came back on the court and bageled Davis to win the match. Federer has now beaten Dimitrov in all five career meetings.

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.

Lauren Davis opted for almond butter to recharge when up against Maria Sharapova. Puig didn’t win another game after that. “So I thought, you know, it would be really fun to play in one”.

Another break for the Russian hauled her back into the set and it went with serve to a tense tiebreak, which included an epic 27-shot rally.

Even Roger Federer couldn’t hide his excitement at the incredible back-and-forth play between Davis and Sharapova. In the third set she made 88% of her first serves winning 93% of the points.

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

“When it’s not working very well in a match I try to make eye contact with her”, Bencic said.

599 wins behind her, Sharapova is not short of experience, and proceeded to put the hammer down in the third with a 6-1 6-7(5) 6-0 win.

Sharapova missed several months previous year with a right leg injury and withdrew from Brisbane with a sore forearm but says she is fine now.

Gavrilova, ranked 39th in the world, had never been past the second round of a grand slam before this tournament and will now play Spain’s 10th seed Carla Suarez Navarro for a place in the quarter-finals.

Federer is now 67 wins ahead of No. 2 and long-retired Jimmy Connors in terms of Grand Slam singles wins, so the mark is safe for a while.

After producing one of the biggest upsets ever in women’s tennis, Vinci lost in the final to fellow Italian Flavia Pennetta.

This story has been corrected to show the score in the last set of the Sharapova-Davis match was 6-0.