TENNIS/Australian Open:Rafael Nadal remarked last week that he kept falling asleep during the afternoon in his hotel room. It was a feeling many others experienced here yesterday after Saturday's night match between Lleyton Hewitt and Marcos Baghdatis did not finish until 4.34am, with the Australian thankfully the winner.
But there was no trace of the sandman in the Spaniard's eyes as he ripped into Paul-Henri Mathieu under the Rod Laver Arena floodlights, Nadal reaching his second successive Australian Open quarter-final when the Frenchman had to quit at 6-4 3-0 down after 50 minutes. Nadal now plays Jarkko Nieminen of Finland, another left-hander.
Something like mild hysteria broke out in certain sections of the Melbourne Park tennis centre when Mathieu's injured left calf made it impossible for him to continue. Many of the staff were practically propping their eyelids up with matchsticks, so the prospects of a relatively early night were seized on with undisguised glee. Nadal seemed pretty happy too.
While just about everybody had been trying to readjust to tennis as it is normally played, in other words not between the hours of midnight and dawn, the seventh day of the Australian Open began to sharpen the focus on what will be the defining last few days of the tournament.
Three top-10 seeds crashed out as the tournament heated up. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga's astonishing campaign continued as the unseeded Frenchman dumped compatriot Richard Gasquet in the fourth round.
Tsonga, who disposed of British number one Andy Murray on Monday, moved into the quarter-finals with a 6-2 6-7 (5/7) 7-6 (8/6) 6-3 over his close friend in three hours and 19 minutes.
Nikolay Davydenko had no answers to fellow Russian Mikhail Youzhny as the 13th-ranked man eliminated the world number three 7-6 (7/2), 6-3, 6-1.
And David Nalbandian was the third big name to fall at Melbourne Park, the number 10 seed handed a straight-sets thumping by former world number one Juan Carlos Ferrero. There was no great escape for the Argentinian comeback specialist as Ferrero found his best form to win 6-1, 6-2, 6-3.
But it was the crowd-pleasing Tsonga that captured the imagination of the fans on day seven. The world number 38 looked at home on centre stage in his second match at a near-capacity Rod Laver Arena, using a blend of fierce baseline power and finesse at the net to record the win over his country's top-ranked male. Gasquet, ranked eight in the world, took the second set but watched the athletic Tsonga storm back.
Tsonga regained the ascendancy in the third-set tie-breaker with a superb backhand up the line and whipped through the fourth to set up a battle with Youzhny. When asked what the difference was between he and his countryman, Tsonga put it simply: "I don't know. In the end, I won, and him, he lost. I played well. I felt very good in my body. Everything felt good."
Tsonga is quickly becoming the rising star of the tournament, much like recent finalists Baghdatis and Fernando Gonzalez before him.
He said the groundswell of support sat comfortably with him, as did the chance to play before packed stands on the main court for the tournament.
"I'm very comfortable on this arena," he said. "Every time I've played it has been full, so there is a very good atmosphere."
Mathieu, the 23rd seed, received treatment twice in the first set of his encounter with Nadal for an ankle injury. After going down two breaks in the second set, he was unable to continue, handing Nadal victory and a date with Nieminen in the quarter-finals.
Nadal said that although he felt physically fit after so little time on court, he was expecting a tough encounter against the 24th seeded Finn.
"Physically it is better to have short matches. But you never know what's going on in the next round," he said. "I have a difficult opponent. Nieminen is a very tough player, a fighter, so it is going to be an interesting match."
Nieminen won a quality four-set clash earlier in the day against German number 29 seed Philipp Kohlschreiber.
Nieminen dropped the first set in 37 minutes as Kohlschreiber carried on the form that took him past American Andy Roddick in the previous round.
In back-to-back tie-breakers - which ended 9-7 and 11-9 in favour of the Finn - Nieminen set up a 2-1 lead and comfortably held sway to seal a place in the final eight 6-3.
