Djokovic, Wawrinka and Serena all look Strong as the head into the Quarterfinals
Novak Djokovic reached his 23rd consecutive Grand Slam quarterfinal with a 6-4, 7-5, 7-5 win over Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller at the Australian Open on Monday. The Serbian star player is trying to become the second man after Roy Emerson to win five Australian Open titles. He’s also aiming for his eighth major title overall. The top-seed hasn’t lost a set yet in the tournament and was rarely in trouble against Muller, saving all four break points he faced and hitting 47 winners to just 16 unforced errors. He next faces eighth-seeded Canadian Milos Raonic, against whom he has a 4-0 head-to-head record and considering the last time Djokovic failed to reach the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam was at the 2009 French Open the best tennis tipster would suggest him making the semi-final with ease.
The Australian Open defending champion, Stan Wawrinka, lined up a quarterfinal showdown with Japan’s Kei Nishikori, with a hard-fought win over Spain’s Guillermo García-López. The fourth-seeded Swiss saved four set points in the fourth set to triumph 7-6 (7-2), 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 (10-8). Nishikori on the other-hand did it more comfortably against the Spanish veteran David Ferrer, who has twice made the semi-finals at Melbourne Park, winning 6-3, 6-3, 6-3. The Japanese fifth seed has hit the big time on the back of an impressive 2014 when he became the first man from an Asian country to reach a grand slam final, losing the US Open title to Marin Cilic. He blasted 43 winners to Ferrer’s 14 and, although he tightened a little in the final game, got home on his third match point in just over two hours. The World best tipster would certainly be cautious in calling the winner of this Qurter-final.
Serena Willliams has reached her 39th Grand Slam quarterfinal, in her 20th year as a professional. Of the last 14 calendar years, she has won a Grand Slam in 13 of them. The American is 33, and has been suffering from a cold for the last couple of days and considering her opponent, Garbiñe Muguruza, the 21 year-old Spaniard, inflicted Williams’s heaviest ever defeat in a major at the Rolland Garros last year, the best tennis Tipsters would have been wary of this one. When Serena decides to go on the charge, you can almost hear her rumbling like a machine and she stops berating himself between points and stops looking up at her players’ box. The real pivot of the match came during the first two games of the deciding set: two games that lasted 25 minutes and produced some of the finest tennis of this year’s women’s tournament. It was like watching two wrestlers on a tightrope. First Muguruza saved three break points, Williams’s forehand going temporarily awry. Then, with Williams serving at 15-40, Muguruza pinned Williams into her backhand corner and moved in for the kill, only to plant her forehand volley well long. Five more break points came and went. Muguruza’s last chance went with them.