Coco Gauff hopes she’s got her “bad” match out of the way at the Australian Open before meeting defending champion Aryna Sabalenka in the semi-finals.
The 19-year-old US Open winner overcame 51 unforced errors, nine double-faults and had just 17 winners to beat Marta Kostyuk 7-6 (6), 6-7 (3), 6-2 Tuesday in a quarterfinal match that lasted three hours, eight minutes.
That long three-setter had a knock-on effect that made for a light, but long night at Melbourne Park. It took Novak Djokovic 3 & 3/4 hours to hold off Taylor Fritz 7-6 (3), 4-6, 6-2, 6-3 and reach the Australian Open semi-finals for the 11th time.
The first game took 16 minutes, the first set lasted an hour and 24 minutes. In the end, top-ranked Djokovic extended his winning streak at Melbourne Park to 33 matches, a tournament record he shares with Monica Seles.
Djokovic is unbeaten in semi-finals and finals at the Australian Open, where he’s won 10 of his record 24 major titles. Sabalenka’s title defence has been gathering momentum and her 6-2, 6-3 win over No. 9-seeded Barbora Krejcikova was her fifth straight-sets victory in a row.
The extra-long day session pushed the start of the night session back to after 9 pm local time, with Krejcikova serving to start the first of the two-night quarterfinals at 9:09 pm.
“I played great tennis,” Sabalenka said. “I hope I can keep playing that way, or even better.”
It wasn’t until after 10:30 p.M. That No. 4 Jannik Sinner and No. 5 Andrey Rublev went on the court to start warming up for their match.
Gauff has won 12 consecutive matches in Grand Slams and is two victories from winning back-to-back major titles, but she had a close call against first-time quarterfinalist Kostyuk.
“Today was definitely a C game,” Gauff said. “Didn’t play my best tennis, but really proud that I was able to get through. Hopefully, got the bad match out of the way and I can play even better.”
Gauff’s forehand was particularly vulnerable and Kostyuk took full advantage, racing to 5-1 only to show her fragility with two double faults to hand back one of the breaks.
She recovered to save a set point at 5-3 before levelling at 5-5. Kostyuk had another set point in the tie-breaker, but Gauff won it.
The mistakes continued to flow, and though she led 5-3 in the second set, Gauff could not close it out. She was two points from victory at 6-5, 40-40, but Kostyuk held and took the tiebreak 7-3 to level.
The Ukrainian player said she was pleased to have made the quarterfinals at a Grand Slam tournament for the first time.
“Very proud of myself,” she said. “I won for myself today and it’s the most important thing.
