David Ferrer reached his sixth quarterfinal at the Australian Open, holding off No. 10 John Isner 6-4, 6-4, 7-5. The Canadian looked all too convincing in his win over Viktor Troicki setting up a massive showdown against Stan Wawrinka, the fourth seed and 2014 champion. Anxious for both his wife and for Sears, Murray was in no mood to play at first. The incident had shaken him up, he said, but he was now pleased the 58-year-old was on his way home.
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“The last few days were very tough”.
Murray was certainly not at his rhythmic best against Tomic, who broke the Briton four times during a topsy-turvy contest.
“It was a tough match in general, for sure”, said Wawrinka after the match.
Fourth-seeded Wawrinka fell to Raonic while No. 2 seed Andy Murray cruised to another straight set victory.
She now has an excellent chance of reaching her first Grand Slam semi-final in three years, as, per BBC Sport, she will face in the last eight a player to whom she has never lost: Kerber.
Raonic pushed Wawrinka all the way to five sets, and buried him in the fifth, ultimately winning 6-4, 6-3, 5-7, 4-6, 6-3.
In earlier matches, two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka advanced with a 6-2, 6-4 win over Barbora Strycova 6-2, 6-4.
Azarenka will play No. 7-seed Angelique Kerber in the quarterfinals after the German beat fellow countrywoman Annika Beck 6-4, 6-0.
KONTA VS. ZHANG. Konta is the first British woman to get this far at the Australian Open since Jo Durie in 1983, while it took Zhang eight years to win her first singles match at a major.
It will be the seventh consecutive quarter-final in Melbourne for Murray, who is bidding to finally win the title for the first time after four runner-up finishes.
Milos Raonic beat French Open champion Stan Wawrinka 6-4, 6-3, 5-7, 4-6, 6-3 to advance to the quarterfinals of the Australian Open. Mentally, it was a significant boost, even if Wawrinka said he’d been ill for almost two weeks. “I woke up feeling quite drained, quite exhausted today”.
“I’m sitting this one out”, she said.
Andy Murray must stop the only man yet to drop a set at the Australian Open when he bids to make the semi-final tomorrow.
For the first time since 1977, Britain will have representation in both the men’s and women’s quarter-finals after Johanna Konta battled to victory over Russia’s Ekaterina Makarova.
Murray was in a emotional wreck as soon as he heard news of Sears collapsing in the stands of Rod Laver Arena two days ago.
“I think it’s about trying to play in your rhythm and dictating”, world number 14 Raonic, who briefly reached as high as number four previous year, said in an on-court interview.
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“When I was injured”, he said, “and I wasn’t so caught up in playing a lot of matches, traveling from tournament to tournament, when I was sort of sitting there maybe a little bit annoyed with the physical situation I was in, I was asking myself all the time, ‘What can I do to get better?'”
