"I don't want to stop here." It was clear, Jannik Sinner, on the eve of the match that marks his eighth participation in the round of 16 of a Grand Slam tournament. Tomorrow, from 9 am, the blue will go hunting for the quarterfinals, but he will first have to overcome the obstacle represented by the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas, n.3 on the board, currently the tennis player with the highest position in the ATP ranking. A success in the land of kangaroos would give him the world leadership, at the expense of the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz. «All matches are important and all matches won are indicative - explains Sinner - but I particularly like Grand Slams. Maybe also because I like being on the pitch. Because I like playing tennis.' Some doubts about the time of the match. «It's not ideal, because then you don't have space to recover. But sometimes it can happen. In the past it happened to me too to finish very late, but in this tournament I was lucky, because they always let me play at 11 in the morning». One year Tsitsipas prevented Sinner from moving forward. « Being back in the round of 16 is definitely a good thing - says Jannik - obviously I'll try not to stop there. Last year, as we know, I lost, but my goal is to go on».
Again in the men's field Novak Djokovic, despite some physical problems that forced him several times to undergo medical treatment on the field, brilliantly managed to qualify for the round of 16. On the court of the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, the Serbian defeated the Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov in three sets with the score 7-6 (9-7), 6-3, 6-4. Andy Murray's adventure in Australia came to an abrupt end: the Scottish tennis player was in fact beaten in four sets by the Spanish Roberto Bautista Agut with a score of 6-1, 6-7 (7-9), 6-3, 6-4. Murray had eliminated the blue Matteo Berrettini in the first round of the prestigious Australian tournament and at the end of a painful marathon. In the women's tournament, Italian tennis remains without representatives: Camila Giorgia, in fact, was eliminated in the third round.
The 31-year-old from Macerata, n.70 in the world, was beaten by the 25-year-old Swiss Belinda Bencic (n.10) with a score of 6-2, 7-5, after 1h40' of play. A bit too harsh a score for the blue, at least as far as we saw on the pitch, however the Swiss proved to be more constant and concrete: on the scoresheet for her 18 winners and 23 free, against the 20 winners and 32 free of Camila, who probably also paid for the lack of matches. Returning to the Adelaide 2 qualifying circuit (immediately eliminated), after almost four and a half months of hiatus, the Marche girl had not won two matches in a row in the same tournament since the Toronto 1000 in August 2022.