Maria Sharapova roars back to reach fourth round of Australian Open

World number five Maria Sharapova battled past petite Lauren Davis and into the Australian Open fourth round on Friday as she edges closer to another showdown with arch-rival Serena Williams.

With Hibino having no answers to Sharapova’s game, it was no surprise that the five-time Grand Slam champion found herself up a double break within minutes of the commencement of the second set.

The No. 7-seeded Nishikori, a two-time quarterfinalist here, dropped serve just once when he was serving for the second set but recovered to win a tight tiebreaker.

Sharapova said, when an on-court interviewer congratulated her for the achievement earned by winning her third-round match Friday at the Australian Open. “When you’re in a grand slam in a third round against a player you haven’t played before, who is fired up and is not just going to give you the match it’s exactly what happened”.

While Sharapova struggled and made 33 unforced errors against Davis in the one hour, 17-minute second set, there wasn’t all that much chance she would lose the match.

“I was quite happy I was able to step it up in the third set”.

The Russian right-hander’s 600th career win set up a meeting with 12th seed Belinda Bencic after the Swiss teen scored a 4-6, 6-2, 6-4 win over Ukraine’s Kateryna Bondarenko. “At 28 years old, I’m healthy and look forward to playing for many years”.

Maria Sharapova admits she took her foot off the gas as the Russian survived a scare to beat American Lauren Davis at the Australian Open. Playing in his 13th major, Sock has only advanced past the third round at a Grand Slam tournament once, making the fourth round at last year’s French Open.

“It’s actually something that I had to add, because I was getting really frustrated losing to my hitting partner all the time”.

Despite the loss, Thiem was praised for his sportsmanship in the second set.

The No. 1 seed Serena Williams from the U.S. won her match in straight sets against Camila Gorgi and the No. 6 seed and former Wimbledon champ Petra Kivitika won her match against the Thai qualifier Luksika Kumkhum.

Between the second and third sets, Sharapova took an extended break to change her clothes and came back storming, hitting two aces with her first two serves of the third set and closing out the remainder without dropping a game to move to the fourth round. Gavrilova is into her first Australian Open Round of 16 and is the first Aussie woman into fourth round in Melbourne since Casey Dellacqua in 2014. For a first Grand Slam performance, I thought she was there till the end.

Sharapova has been hampered by injuries for the best part of a year while a problem with her forearm disrupted preparations for the first major tournament of the season. “No matter how much you train, it’s always different when you walk out onto the court”, she said.

“I think it’s a proud number”, she said at her post-match news conference.