IN the players' area at Melbourne Park, Goran Ivanisevic sat open-mouthed and former champion John Newcombe shook his head three times.

No one expected what happened yesterday.

Having looked so good while winning the title in Brisbane at the start of the year, Roger Federer succumbed in the third round, beaten 6-4, 7-6, 4-6, 7-6 by Italy's Andreas Seppi in just over three hours of unrelenting drama.

Britain's Davis Cup captain, Leon Smith, who told friends the previous night that Seppi had a big chance of causing an upset, was one of the few who saw it coming but even Federer acknowledged that he had a premonition that it would not be an easy day.

"I felt for some reason yesterday and this morning it was not going to be very simple today," said the Swiss, describing it simply as "a disappointing loss".

"I was just hoping it was one of those feelings you sometimes have and it's totally not true and you just come out and you play a routine match. It was a mistake.

"I was aware of the test and was well-prepared. Just somehow I couldn't play my best tennis. It was definitely partially because of Andreas playing very well."

Partially, but not totally. This was not the Federer who almost whitewashed Murray at the O2 in November and certainly not the one who has won 17 grand slams. The world No.2 shanked balls into the stands, made a host of routine errors and his serve, usually so accurate, was attacked by Seppi, the 30-year-old who will climb from his ranking of 46.

It was Federer's earliest exit here since 2001, long before he had won a grand slam title, and it was his first loss in 11 meetings with the Italian.

"I wanted to go into the match, play aggressive, play the right way, play on my terms, but it was just hard to do," he said. "For some reason I struggled. It just broke me to lose that second set. And actually the fourth, I should win it, too. Just a brutal couple of sets to lose there."

When Rafa Nadal was struggling not to throw up on court during his second-round match with American Tim Smyczek, few people would have said he would outlast Federer.

The Spaniard was still struggling a day later but an extra 24 hours did the trick and he wiped the floor with Dudi Sela, 6-1, 6-0, 7-5 to set up a meeting with Kevin Anderson.

The Australian challenge was maintained as Nick Krygios won through to face Seppi and Bernard Tomic took out his compatriot, Sam Groth, to set up an encounter with Tomas Berdych.

The women's draw was largely drama free, by contrast, as Maria Sharapova, Eugenie Bouchard and Simona Halep all advanced to the last 16.