Zheng sweeps into last eight, as Alcaraz set to face Zverev

MELBOURNE, Australia－Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz will meet Olympic gold medalist Alexander Zverev in the Australian Open quarterfinals and Daniil Medvedev is also back in a last eight that is stacked with the top six seeds.

While the men's competition is playing fairly true to the rankings, the women's really is a tale of two halves.

No 12-seeded Zheng Qinwen, a quarterfinalist at last year's US Open, is the highest-ranked player left in the top half of the bracket, where all four women who won Monday reached the last eight at Melbourne Park for the first time.

"The people who arrive to quarterfinals, for sure they're all feeling really good in this tournament," Zheng said after her 6-0, 6-3 win over No 95 Oceane Dodin. "It's one player against another player, and we will compete."

She will next play No 75-ranked Anna Kalinskaya, while No 50, Linda Noskova, who beat top-ranked Iga Swiatek in the third round, will meet No 93 Dayana Yastremska.

There's still three Grand Slam winners in the other half of the bracket. No 2 Aryna Sabalenka, the defending champion, would take on 2021 French Open champion Barbora Krejcikova while US Open winner Coco Gauff beat Marta Kostyuk in the quarterfinals on Tuesday.

Alcaraz through

The 20-year-old Alcaraz missed the 2023 Australian Open because of injury, but is making up for lost time.

He beat Miomir Kecmanovic 6-4,6-4, 6-0 in less than two hours to open Monday's night session at Rod Laver Arena.

"Every match I'm playing, I'm feeling better and better on a court I haven't played that much," Alcaraz, the only man to beat Djokovic in a major last year, said of his buildup here. "Hopefully, it will be the same as Wimbledon."

He has dropped just one set so far in the tournament.

Zverev is into the quarterfinals here for the third time, but is coming off some long five-set wins, including a four-hour, 7-5, 3-6, 6-3,4-6, 7-6 (3) fourth-round victory over No 19 Cameron Norrie.

It was the 32nd five-set match so far at the tournament, an Open era record in Australia.

Their match at Margaret Court Arena was prolonged due to a brief delay caused by a protester throwing antiwar pamphlets onto the back of the court in the third set.

The protester was eventually escorted out by security.

No 3 Medvedev, a two-time Australian Open runner-up, beat No 69-ranked Nuno Borges 6-3, 7-6 (4),5-7, 6-1 and will next face No 9 Hubert Hurkacz, who ended the run of French wild-card entry Arthur Cazaux 7-6 (6), 7-6 (3), 6-4.

Some unexpected charges continue in the women's field, with opportunities opening up for the likes of Noskova, Yastremska and Kalinskaya to advance to the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam for the first time.

Kalinskaya beat No 26 Jasmine Paolini 6-4, 6-2 to end a streak of 13 majors that didn't go beyond the second round.

Yastremska beat the 18th-seeded Victoria Azarenka, a two-time Australian Open champion, 7-6 (6),6-4, and No 23-seeded Elina Svitolina had to retire after hurting her back when she was trailing Noskova 3-0.

"I got a spasm, like a shooting pain," she said. "Couldn't do anything, completely locked my back, just very sad. I had some injuries to my back before where it just was tiredness ... but this one was really out of nowhere. I felt like someone shot me."

The 19-year-old Noskova is now the youngest player to reach the Australian Open women's quarterfinals since 2008.

Yastremska saved set points in the first against Azarenka, and was down a break in the second, but rallied to win six of the last seven games.

"I think I need to take a thousand breaths because I think my heart is going to jump out of my body," Yastremska said. "During the match, I was imagining how had already lost, like, 25 times. I was losing the tiebreak, I was losing the second set, I always felt as if I was running behind the train.

"But, I think I won this match because I'm a little bit of a fighter."

Agencies Via Xinhua