Djokovic, Serena enter Australian Open fourth round

World No. 1 Novak Djokovic beat 29th-ranked Andreas Seppi in straight sets 6-1, 7-5, 7-6 (6) to keep alive his hopes of defending his Australian Open title, but afterwards he admitted that the Italian had made things hard for him.

Two breaks were enough in the first set but the 10-time major champion was already showing signs of sluggishness as he struggled to penetrate with his serve and made 19 unforced errors from the baseline.

“But I’m still not very satisfied with certain parts of the second and third sets”. More opportunities came with Seppi leading 6-4 in the ensuing tiebreaker.

Hurtling around the arena on legs that have always looked too spindly to take the kind of punishment they regularly endure, the 31-year-old Frenchman absorbed Djokovic’s power and timed his shots to perfection to hurl it back at the Serbian. The world No. 1 fought off a pair of set points and eventually clinched victory with a service victor at 7-6. “But nevertheless the ball bounces low”.

“Novak is the clear favourite in that match, he is playing amazingly everywhere in attack, defensively, so you don’t have much space to work with”, Simon said, reports the Australian Open’s official website. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, I’ve just been approached, it’s all cool, ‘ and we don’t talk about it. I think it’s really important that you get supported and get also told how to manage that”.

Closing out the day’s play the featured night matches saw plucky Aussie Daria Gavrilova run out of steam against a more wily Carla Suárez Navarro while Agnieszka Radwanska had a lucky escape from Anna-Lena Friedsam who caught the Pole napping, taking the first set off her before an injury and cramp late in the third set saw the German spiral into tears and a plethora of point deductions for “unreasonable serving delays” and even a foot-fault when she could barely push up to serve.

The Czech will now face 17-time major champion Roger Federer, who eased past Belgium’s David Goffin 6-2 6-1 6-4.

Gilles Simon has also achieved a lot in his life and yes he is in the fourth round of Australian Open Tennis after fighting the three matches with V. Pospisil, E. Donskoy, and F. Delbonis. “I got myself into the quarterfinal of a Grand Slam”.

“He won against (Roger) Federer previous year in third round”. But, again, I played a quality player who took out Federer last year here and who has been on the Tour for many years. Not something I ever aimed for or looked for, but when it happens, it’s very special. “I was happy to, which after the Dimitrov match, which wasn’t so straightforward, wasn’t so easy, I was able to find an extra gear, I guess”. Yeah, so it’s very nice.

As for the action, Djokovic beat world No 187 Halys 6-1, 6-2, 7-6 to earn a third-round meeting with Andreas Seppi. Sharapova, the fifth seed, took down No. 12 Belinda Bencic, 7-5, 7-5, on Sunday.

A break of the Simon serve began to seem inevitable, and Djokovic grabbed it in the fourth game to go 3-1. I’m an indoor player, and the conditions were indoors. “Got a lot of respect for him”. Federer spoke to this point in the ESPN piece when he said, “if he heard someone was offered money to fix matches, he would encourage him to go to the tennis authorities”.