Only one round left until the dream duel: The tournament favorites Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic have moved closer to a possible meeting in the quarter-finals at the Australian Open with easy victories in round three. The Spanish top star won against Nuno Borges from Portugal, the Serbian Grand Slam record champion eliminated the Czech Tomas Machac.
Alcaraz continues to march unstoppably through the tournament. However, when he defeated Borges 6:2, 6:4, 7:6 (7:3), 6:2 after 2:55 hours, the world number three surprisingly had to give up his first set of the tournament.
“The last time I played here I lost. I really wanted to play here again and get another win in the Rod Laver Arena,” said Alcaraz, who lost the quarter-finals to Alexander Zverev at the same venue last year . His opponent Borges delivered impressive resistance in the third round, Alcaraz even threw himself on the ground during a rally and let his racket fly, but the set went to the Portuguese. Afterwards, the favorite didn’t let anything go wrong.
Alcaraz is aiming for his fifth Grand Slam title. Should he succeed in his first coup Down Under, he would become the youngest player in tennis history to complete his collection of majors and thus surpass the American Don Budge, who achieved the career Grand Slam in 1938 at the age of 22.
The Serbian Novak Djokovic recently celebrated such milestones; he recently overtook the previous record holder Roger Federer with his 430th Grand Slam match.
In match 431 he remained without losing a set against Machac and won 6:1, 6:4, 6:4 after 2:22 hours. Even a medical interruption after the 37-year-old apparently felt unwell didn’t faze him. On the contrary: Despite the remarkable performance of his counterpart from the Czech Republic, Djokovic made a demonstration of power in the first two sentences. With concentrated shots, enormous focus and a low error rate, the Serb ensured clear conditions.
Djokovic also won the highlight of the game, a rally with 30 strokes with Machac serving, and even brought a smile to the lips of his coach Andy Murray in the third set. Djokovic is setting his sights on the eleventh title Down Under, the 25th Grand Slam victory overall – and thus the sole cross-gender record.
In the round of 16 he will face Machac’s compatriot Jiri Lehecka, Alcaraz has to defeat the winner of the game between Jack Draper and Aleksandar Vukic for the dream quarter-finals. Alexander Zverev could wait in the semifinals.