After the beautiful chaos of comebacks, record-breaking tiebreaks, upsets and late finishes at Melbourne Park on Thursday, some sort of order was restored on Day 6 as many of the big names eased into the fourth round with a lot less drama.
A spot in the last 16 at a major is serious business, and many of the seeds stepped things up with Aryna Sabalenka, Coco Gauff, Jannik Sinner and Stefanos Tsitsipas all producing at least one ‘bagel’ set during comfortable wins.
Fourth seed Sinner brushed aside Argentine Sebastian Baez for the loss of just four games to move into the fourth round without dropping a set in the tournament so far.
While he was taking care of business on Margaret Court Arena, just next door defending champion Sabalenka blasted her way past Lesia Tsurenko without losing a single game.
Tsitsipas was in a hurry too as he swept aside young Frenchman Luca Van Assche 6-3 6-0 6-4 at the same time as reigning US Open champion Gauff was racing past fellow American Alycia Parks 6-0 6-2.
Novak Djokovic made sure both of last year’s singles champions moved into the second week when he marked his 100th match at Melbourne Park with his 31st consecutive Australian Open victory.
The Serb played his best match of the week to beat Argentine Tomas Martin Etcheverry 6-3 6-3 7-6(2).
After demolishing sixth seed Ons Jabeur in the second round, 16-year-old Mirra Andreeva produced one of the comebacks of the tournament to beat Diane Parry in a deciding tiebreak having trailed 1-5 in the final set.
The teenager’s next test comes against ninth seed and former Roland Garros champion Barbora Krejcikova, who ended qualifier Storm Hunter’s run in three sets under the Rod Laver Arena lights.
Maria Timofeeva made sure there would be at least one qualifier in the fourth round, the world No. 170 scoring the biggest win of her career to beat 10th seed Beatriz Haddad Maia.
Others to go through in the women’s draw included American Amanda Anisimova, former Australian Open girls' champion Marta Kostyuk and Poland’s Magdalena Frech.
The big surprise in the men’s event came when French veteran Adrian Mannarino dismantled last year’s quarterfinalist and 16th seed Ben Shelton 6-4 in the fifth set to set up a meeting with Djokovic.
There was better news for another American, though, as Taylor Fritz beat Hungarian Fabian Marozsan to book a date with Tsitsipas.
Last year’s semifinalist Karen Khachanov beat Tomas Machac in four sets and will be back to play the in-form Sinner, while Alex de Minaur kept the Aussie flag flying as he swept past Italy’s Flavio Cobolli.
New top 10 star ‘Demon’ will play fifth seed Andrey Rublev, who was too solid for Sebastian Korda during a straight-sets win late in the day.