But Gauff did not play as well this time, winding up with 48 unforced errors, more than twice as many as Kenin’s 22.
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After dropping the opening set, Kenin immediately tilted things her way, breaking in the initial game and never letting that lead slip away.
When it ended, appropriately enough, on a missed backhand by Gauff, Kenin dropped her racket at the baseline and covered her face as tears welled in her eyes.
Just before Gauff announced herself last season by becoming the youngest qualifier in Wimbledon history and beating Venus Williams en route to the fourth round, Kenin strode onto the Grand Slam stage at the French Open by upsetting Serena Williams to get to the round of 16 at a major for the first time.
Gauff’s power is impressive. One tiny indication: She slammed a forehand into the net so hard that it dislodged a piece of a sponsor’s white plastic sign.
Kenin can’t copy that. But thanks to her relentless ball-tracking and a bit of in-your-face attitude with a racket in hand, Kenin surged up the WTA rankings from 52nd to 12th in 2019 while winning her first three tour-level singles titles plus a couple in doubles.
Also on Sunday, defending champion Novak Djokovic moved into a quarterfinal against No. 32 Milos Raonic.
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Djokovic defeated No. 14 Diego Schwarzman, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4. Raonic beat 2014 U.S. Open champion and 2018 Australian Open runner-up Marin Cilic, 6-4, 6-3, 7-5, with the help of 35 aces.
Perhaps just as noteworthy: The Canadian produced 30 more aces than Cilic, a big server himself.
Raonic has 59 holds in a row and won all 12 sets he has played so far en route to his third quarterfinal in Melbourne. He was the runner-up at Wimbledon in 2016, but hasn’t been to a Grand Slam semifinal since while dealing with a series of injuries in recent seasons.
“I haven’t gotten to do this much over the last two years,” Raonic said, “so it means a lot to me.”
He has been overshadowed of late by other, younger Canadians: Bianca Andreescu, who won the U.S. Open last year at 19 but missed the Australian Open with a knee injury; and Denis Shapovalov, 20, and Felix Auger-Alissime, 19, who both were seeded among the top 20 men at Melbourne Park but lost in the first round.
At Melbourne Arena, Gauff won the toss, elected to serve and proceeded to hand over a quick break, accumulating four misses, including a backhand that hit the net tape and popped back onto her side. Kenin shouted “Come on!” while the ball was still in the air.
She soon took leads of 2-0 and 4-2, as a tentative Gauff was trying to feel her way into the match. But then Kenin faltered, a bit of inexperience revealing itself when she opted not to challenge a forehand of hers that was called out -- and a TV replay showed was in.
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That mistake granted Gauff her initial break chance of the afternoon, which Kenin then donated by sailing a forehand long.
Suddenly it was 4-all, and they headed to a tiebreaker, where Kenin blinked first. She had avoided even one double-fault until then, but offered up two as Gauff went ahead 5-2, used a 119 mph (191 kph) serve to set up a forehand winner for 6-2 and, after letting set points slip away, closed it when Kenin netted a backhand.
Gauff repaid the favor in the second set, offering a trio of double-faults in one game — she finished with seven — to get broken and trail 3-1. They would play for more than two hours in total, and Gauff never got back in it.
Also advancing was last year’s runner-up in Melbourne, two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, who was down a set and a break before coming back to defeat No. 22 Maria Sakkari 6-7 (7-4), 6-3, 6-2.
“From the beginning, it was a lot of nerves out there. I didn’t feel the best. I was just, you know, too tight and everything was flying,” Kvitova said.
Eventually, she worked out the issues, began to swing more freely and took control.
Kvitova’s quarterfinal opponent will be No. 1 seed Ash Barty — trying to become the first Australian to win the nation’s Grand Slam tournament since the 1970s — or No. 18 Alison Riske of the United States.
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Nick Kyrgios put aside a bloody hand, a hamstring issue, a tiff with the chair umpire, and a resilient opponent who saved a pair of match points.
When the third-round thriller ended after about 4½ hours Saturday, Kyrgios dropped to his back behind the baseline. Guess what’s next for the home-crowd favorite? A much-anticipated matchup with a familiar, but decidedly not-so-friendly foe: No. 1 Rafael Nadal.
Kyrgios eventually got past No. 16 Karen Khachanov, 6-2, 7-6 (7-5), 6-7 (6-8), 6-7 (7-9), 7-6 (10-8), with the help of 33 aces and what sounded like an entire country of supporters in the stands.
“This is just epic, man,” Kyrgios said. “Like, I don’t even know what’s going on.”
Kyrgios initially was a point from winning at 6-5 in the third-set tiebreaker, then again an hour later at 8-7 in the fourth-set tiebreaker, but he needed yet another hour to pull out the victory when Khachanov pushed a backhand wide.
“I was losing it mentally, a little bit,” Kyrgios said. “I thought I was going to lose, honestly.”
Along the way, he hit a dive-and-roll backhand, scraped his knuckles and, after wiping the blood, was warned for a time violation. That set off Kyrgios, who explained why play was delayed and said to the chair umpire, “Are you stupid? Well, take it back then.”
There are sure to be more fireworks Monday during the eighth edition of Nadal vs. Kyrgios. Even so, Kyrgios tried to downplay the animosity, saying: “Whatever happens between us, he’s an amazing player. Arguably, he’s the greatest of all time.”
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So far, Nadal holds a 4-3 head-to-head edge, including a contentious win in their last meeting, at Wimbledon last July.
Nadal was not thrilled that Kyrgios hit a ball right at him in that match. Kyrgios took a different sort of shot at Nadal from afar the other day in Melbourne, mimicking the 33-year-old Spaniard’s series of mannerisms before a serve.
“It’s clear, of course, that when he does stuff that in my opinion is not good, I don’t like [it],” Nadal said. “When he plays good tennis and he shows passion for this game, he is a positive player for our tour, and I want my tour bigger, not smaller.”
“So the players who make the tour bigger are important for the tour,” Nadal said. “When he’s ready to play his best tennis and play with passion, [he] is one of these guys. When he’s doing the other stuff, of course I don’t like [it].”
Here’s what Nadal loved Saturday: The way he stepped things up during a 6-1, 6-2, 6-4 victory over 27th-seeded Pablo Carreno Busta that required fewer than 100 minutes.
He finished with a total of merely seven unforced errors among the match’s 125 total points — and six times as many winners at 42.
‘‘I needed to improve,’’ Nadal said, “and I improved.”
His down-the-line lefty forehand was perfectly on-target and ‘‘impossible to read,’’ Carreno Busta explained.
‘‘Starting,’’ Nadal said, ‘‘to create damage.’’
He won 52 of 62 points on his serve.
He never offered his opponent a break chance.
‘‘My best match of the tournament so far, without a doubt,’’ Nadal said. ‘‘Big difference between today and the previous days.’’
Against ‘‘this Rafa,’’ Carreno Busta said, ‘‘you feel a little powerless.’’
‘‘When he plays that comfortably,’’ Carreno Busta said, “there’s nothing you can do.”
And to think: Nadal did this after staying up late enough to watch on TV as the man he’s chasing in the Grand Slam count, Roger Federer, was pushed to a fifth-set tiebreaker before getting through to the fourth round at nearly 1 a.m.
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January 26, 2020 at 07:11AM
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