Rafael Nadal reached the quarter-finals of the Australian Open without dropping a set, comfortably seeing off Fabio Fognini.
He next faces Stefanos Tsitsipas, who received a walkover because of Matteo Berrettini’s abdominal injury, while Russian duo Daniil Medvedev and Andrey Rublev will meet for a place in the last four.
Ashleigh Barty’s smooth progress through the draw continued with a 6-3 6-4 victory over Shelby Rogers. American Jessica Pegula produced the upset of the day by knocking out fifth seed Elina Svitolina.
Picture of the day
Stat of the day
Nadal digs a hole
Nadal has barely put a foot wrong on court so far but he had an awkward moment in the press conference room when he let slip that Berrettini had pulled out before it was officially announced, then endearingly tried to salvage the situation.
The second seed said: “I made a step forward today, something that I needed, and I need to make another one for Wednesday against Tsitsipas, I think it’s going to be. Is it official? He’ll play tonight? OK. I think I heard that Berrettini was a little bit injured but not official at all. Sorry for that. But, yeah, something – well, I messed it up.”
Sporting connections
Pegula comes from a sporting family in the sense her parents, Terry and Kim, own a number of teams, including the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and NHL side the Buffalo Sabres. The 26-year-old spoke about what she has taken from watching the Bills after reaching the last eight.
“It’s definitely something I think I tried to take into my game a little bit, even watching the team getting that grit, that competitive attitude, having that mindset,” she said. “I think it’s been really cool to watch them and kind of channel that energy into how I’ve been doing.”
Fallen seeds
Women: Elina Svitolina (5), Elise Mertens (18), Donna Vekic (28)
Men: Matteo Berrettini (9), Fabio Fognini (16), Casper Rudd (24)
Who’s up next?
Serena Williams’ clash with Simona Halep is the standout match as the quarter-finals get under way on Tuesday.
Halep will attempt to repeat her victory from the Wimbledon final two years ago. In the other women’s match, title favourite Naomi Osaka takes on first-time quarter-finalist Hsieh Su-wei.
Novak Djokovic faces another test of his injured abdominal muscle when he meets sixth seed Alexander Zverev, with the winner to meet either Grigor Dimitrov or qualifier Aslan Karatsev.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here