The naughty player of the host country Nick Kyrgios (23) will have a confrontation considered a blockbuster with Rafael Nadal (Spain) after overcoming Karen Khachanov (Russia, 16) in round 3 with 3-2 after 4 hours 26 minutes on the 25th of January.
Under the enthusiastic support of the audience in Australia, Kyrgios and Khachanov created a match that is considered worth watching in the history of the felt ball village. In this match, after super-stirring Kyrgios got the first two games with the score 6/2 and 7/6. However, in the next two games, the Russian player with a determined spirit of play was removed in both series of tie-break wins.
The two continued to get the audience back when it was time for another fourth tie-break series. With his mischievousness and the enthusiastic cheering of the home audience, super rebellious had a victory with an extra score of 10/8 to win tickets to round 4. After the match, Kyrgios said that was crazy, and he didn’t even know what to say right then. He had no words to describe how he felt right then.
With this victory, Kyrgios will face Nadal in round 4, who also surpassed compatriot Pablo Carreno Busta (27) with a score of 3-0. The matches between Nadal and Kyrgios are always attractive and there are events that cost a lot of paper for the press. In the history of the previous confrontation, Nadal has won 4 matches and lost 3 matches against Kyrgios.
Other seeds in this division include Daniil Medvedev (Russia, 4), Dominic Thiem (Austria, 5), Alexander Zverev (Germany, 7), Gael Monfils (France, 10), Stan Wawrinka (Switzerland, 15) or Andrey Rublev (Russia, 17) also had victories to enter round 4. Certainly, this will be a very difficult branch for Nadal on the way to the Australian Open finals this year.
In the women’s singles, surprises occurred when the strong seeds of this match such as Karolina Pliskova (the Czech Republic, 2), Elina Svitolina (Ukraine, 5) and Belinda Bencic (Switzerland, 6) had easily losing matches. These failures will make this branch more attractive and the opportunity to equally divide the remaining players. However, the former two Grand Slam champions Angelique Kerber (Germany, 17) or Garbine Muguruza (Spain, 32) are still more highly valued for their war experience.