Americans make noise as Davis gives top seed a scare, Keys advances

MELBOURNE, Australia — Top-ranked Simona Halep saved three match points and finally finished off a 4-6, 6-4, 15-13 victory after a 3-hour, 45-minute marathon against American Lauren Davis to reach the fourth round of the Australian Open.

Halep saved three match points while serving in the 22nd game of the third set at 0-40, and Davis saved five break points in the next game to keep the contest alive. The No. 76-ranked Davis had two medical timeouts in the 2-hour, 22-minute third set for blisters on both feet.

“Definitely was a very tough match, so long,” said Halep, who has twice reached the final at the French Open but never won a Grand Slam singles title. “I never played the third set so long, so I’m really happy I could stay and win it. I’m almost dead. I just feel that my muscles are gone. My ankle is, I don’t know how it is because I don’t feel it anymore,.”

It equaled the longest women’s singles match at the Australian Open in terms of games played.

Davis, 24, did everything possible to stay in the match, keeping long rallies alive. She finished with almost twice the number of winners (52 to 27) against slightly more than double the unforced errors (73-39) and broke Halep’s serve six times.

Earlier, U.S. Open finalist Madison Keys advanced 6-3, 6-4 over Ana Bogdan and will next play No. 8 Caroline Garcia, who beat Aliaksandra Sasnovich 6-3, 5-7, 6-2. Sixth-seeded Karolina Pliskova had 11 aces and beat No. 29 Lucie Safarova 7-6 (6), 7-5 in a match featuring just one service break.

The 17th-seeded Keys, who lost in the U.S. Open final last year to Sloane Stephens, saved three break points serving for the match, finally clinching it on her first match point when Bogdan netted a backhand.

Keys missed last year’s Australian Open after undergoing surgery to repair her injured left wrist. She then played only one match after the U.S. Open before shutting down her season early to let the wrist heal.

“I finished the U.S. Open and I was exhausted,” she said. “So as amazing as that run was, the combination of being exhausted from that and having a wrist that still wasn’t 100 percent perfect, I just needed to kind of shut it down, calm down, and then I was really excited to start the new season.”

Keys is the only one of the four American women who reached the semifinals at the U.S. Open last September still in contention in Melbourne — Stephens, Venus Williams and CoCo Vandeweghe were all eliminated in the first round.

On Friday, the heat wasn’t a factor for Rafael Nadal this time against Damir Dzumhur, despite the searing temperature causing trouble for some players.

Nadal reached the fourth round in Australia for the 11th time with the 6-1, 6-3, 6-1 win, and leveled his career head-tohead record with Dzumhur.

His fellow French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko followed Nadal’s match but didn’t make it through to the second week, losing 6-3, 1-6, 6-3 to No. 32-seeded Anett Kontaveit.

Nadal had lost his only previous meeting against Dzumhur, when he had to retire because of heat-related issues in the third set at Miami in 2016.

The 16-time major winner was playing on the No. 2 venue at Melbourne Park, moved across while local hope Nick Kyrgios beat JoWilfried Tsonga in a night match on the main court.

Actor Will Smith had a prime position in the crowd to see Kyrgios win for the first time on Rod Laver Arena, taking the last five points in the tiebreaker for a 7-6 (5), 4-6, 7-6 (6), 7-6 (5) victory.

Kyrgios, aiming to be the first home-grown winner of the Australian men’s title in 42 years, will next play third-ranked Grigor Dimitrov, who beat No. 30 Andrey Rublev 6-3, 4-6, 6-4, 6-4.

The youngest player in the tournament and the oldest player in the men’s draw went out earlier on Day 5.

Fourth-seeded Elina Svitolina ended 15-year-old Marta Kostyuk’s run with a 6-2, 6-2 win. Andreas Seppi withstood 52 aces from 38-year-old Ivo Karlovic for a 6-3, 7-6 (4), 6-7 (3), 6-7 (5), 9-7 victory.