Tuesday's males quarterfinals in Australian Open did not bring any thrillers and emotions same as the matches from preceeding rounds. Stefanos Tsitsipas and Karen Khachanov advanced to the semis easily, while the Greek earned the straight set victory on Jiri Lehecka, and Khachanov won the prematurely ended match against Sebastian Korda who withdrew due to an injury.
The match-up between Khachanov and Korda was the pairing which foreshadowed some close battle, possibly another four or five sets of fight for the place in semifinal. The American was a slight favorite with an average odd 1.78. First set started well for the Russian who gained an early break advantage. Korda leveled the score and force a tiebreak, grabbed by Khachanov 7-5. First set's winner was on the front foot, putting the pressure on Korda, breaking him twice in the decisive games of second set and increasing his lead. The match did not last too long since then, as Korda pulled out after third game of third set, due to an wrist injury. The American revealed in the most-match interview, that this problem appeared already during the tournament in Adelaide and starting from second set, it did not allow him to play on the proper level. Bitter end of great Australian Summer for Korda, who had for sure experienced one of the best periods in his career so far. Khachanov is also going upwards in gis career, as he will appear in second consecutive Grand Slam semifinal after last year's US Open.
Stefanos Tsitsipas was a huge favorite against one of the biggest sensations of this tournament - Jiri Lehecka. The fairytale run of Czech player came to an end, as Tsitsipas was much more clinical player in the decisive moments of this match. The final score 6-3 7-6 6-4 does not fully reflect the course of events, as the Czech was not demolished by Tsitsipas, showing a solid performance, but just not converting his chances. Lehecka produced 8 breakpoints to just 6 earned by Tsitsipas, but he did not manage to take any of his chances. The match was quite tight, but the world's number 4 was more effective in decisive moments. Tsitsipas broke his opponent just twice in whole the match, but with addition of winning the 2nd set tiebreak, he was under full control of this match, ended up just after 2:19 hours.
