Australian Open: For the fourth time in the past five years, Stefanos Tsitsipas has advanced to the Australian Open semifinals. He will now play Russian Karen Khachanov for a place in Sunday’s championship match.
With a 6-3 7-6 (7-2) 6-4 triumph over 21-year-old Lehecka, who had never won a Grand Slam match prior to travelling to Australia, the third seed made it six wins out of six in the last eight majors.
The young Czech, who had upset Felix Auger-Aliassime and Cameron Norrie to advance to the quarterfinals, was broken in his first service game, and despite his amazing effort, he was unable to defeat Tsitsipas in a set.
Tsitsipas stated on the court, “I can say it was a fair dinkum type of performance.” I found a solution, but it felt different this time than the last time we played.
“I had to deal with powerful, deep groundstrokes that were coming at me. I gave it everything I had.”
The Greeks will play Khachanov in the semi-finals on Friday. The Greek, along with Novak Djokovic, still has a chance to end the tournament as the world No. 1.
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Khachanov advanced to a second straight Grand Slam semifinal as Sebastian Korda withdrew due to a wrist injury during their match.
One of the stories of the competition has been American Korda, who beat Hubert Hurkacz and Daniil Medvedev to advance to his first major quarterfinal 25 years after his father Petr won the title.
However, he started to have trouble about the halfway point of the second set, called it quits after dropping seven games in a row, and was down 7-6 (7-5) 6-3 3-0.
It was a really depressing manner for the 22-year-old to exit the match because he was clearly in pain and was forced to chop forehands in an attempt to get back into the contest.
Khachanov is back at the same level in his upcoming event after making it to the final four at a Slam for the first time in his 23rd major tournament at the US Open last summer.
It is amazing to reach consecutive Slam semi-finals, the Russian remarked. “Obviously not how you intended to end the game. It was a fierce battle up to a certain point.”
It was quite a start to the 2023 season for Sebastian Korda.
Get well soon, Sebi! 💙 pic.twitter.com/7XgTGdrpVu
— USTA (@usta) January 24, 2023
The first Grand Slam match between Khachanov and Korda took place at Wimbledon in 2021, and it was a wild match that went all the way to a fifth-set tie-break before the Russian prevailed.
This match appeared to be tight as well, with Korda coming back from a breakdown to force a tie-break in the first set and then playing well to start the second.
After five games, he phoned the trainer to get his right wrist wrapped, but he lost the next two.
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