The outcome was favorable to him but the world number one suffered! Jannik Sinner beat the Dane Holger Rune (13th) this Monday in four sets at the Australian Open, enough to qualify him for his 10th Grand Slam quarter-final at the age of 23. Although he won (6-3, 3-6, 6-3, 6-2), the Italian visibly suffered from the heat – it was over 30 degrees – and notably suffered from tremors during of a change of sides.
In the images captured by the cameras and broadcast by Eurosport, we see the player struggling at the start of the third set. As he tries to cool his face with a damp cloth, his right hand shakes strongly for several seconds.
Sinner and Rune took turns taking a medical timeout in the 3rd set. The fourth set was then interrupted for around twenty minutes at 1-0 for Rune, time to repair the net after a service from Sinner had torn off the hoop fixing it to the ground.
De Minaur or Michelsen in the next round
The defending champion will face in the next round the last Australian in the men’s draw Alex De Minaur (8th) or the American Alex Michelsen (42nd), whose round of 16 is scheduled for the evening in Melbourne.
A double Grand Slam winner (Australian Open and US Open 2024), Sinner joins his compatriot Nicola Pietrangeli in the history books, the only Italian player to have reached the quarter-finals of a Grand Slam ten times. If he wins in Melbourne, he would become the most successful Italian in major tournaments, a record he currently shares with Pietrangeli, winner of Roland-Garros in 1959 and 1960.
The world number 1, who now leads 3-2 in his confrontations with Rune, joined his rivals Alexander Zverev (2nd), Carlos Alcaraz (3rd) and Novak Djokovic (7th) on Monday in the quarter-finals. The Spaniard and the Serbian will face each other in the quarter-finals.