Sport

Australian Open day eight preview: Nadal faces Fognini for place in quarter-finals

World No.2 Rafael Nadal will be looking to reach the quarter-finals of the Australian Open when he faces 16th seed Fabio Fognini in the fourth round on Monday. 

Nadal saw off Brit Cameron Norrie in the previous round in straight sets, while Fognini beat Australian Alex de Minaur to set up a tricky tie with the Spaniard. 

The winner will face either fifth seed Stefanos Tsitsipas or ninth seed Matteo Berrettini. 

Meanwhile fourth seed Daniil Medvedev will be looking to reach the quarter-final himself when he comes up against unseeded American Mackenzie McDonald in the fourth round. 

Elsewhere, Russian seventh seed Andrey Rublev will meet 24th seed Norwegian Casper Ruud in the other fourth round match. 

In the women’s singles, World No.1 and tournament favourite Ashleigh Barty will face unseeded American Shelby Rogers in the women’s fourth round. 

Australian Barty saw off Russian Ekaterina Alexandrova in the last round and will be hoping to meet either Elise Mertens and Karolína Muchová in the quarter-final. 

Fifth seed Elina Svitolina will face American Jessica Pegula, while Donna Vekić comes up against Jennifer Brady in the day’s other fixture.  

Finally, in the doubles Great Britain’s Jamie Murray and his partner Bruno Soares will be hoping to reach the fourth round when they face Simone Bolelli and Máximo González. 

Murray will then team up with Bethanie Mattek-Sands in the second round of the mixed doubles to face third seeds Gabriela Dabrowski and Mate Pavic.

Meanwhile, Britain’s Joe Salisbury and Rajeev Ram will come up against Australia’s John Peers and Michael Venus in the men’s doubles, and Heather Watson and Leylah Fernandez will take on Sharon Fichman and Giuliana Olmos in the women’s third round. 

Featured Image Credit: Yan Caradec via Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Related Articles