Australian Open 2012: Serena Falls; Djokovic Drops Set To Hewitt, But Advances

Day 8 of the 2012 Australian Open is in the books and the quarterfinal matches for the men’s competition are now set.

In the final men’s fourth-round match on Day 8, the number one-ranked tennis player in the world, Novak Djokovic, squared off against Australian native Lleyton Hewitt. Djokovic dispatched Hewitt in four sets, 6-1, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3. Djokovic had 15 aces in the match.

Andy Murray was well on his way to victory in the fourth round of the Australian Open, up two sets to none and leading the third set, 1-0. But Murray didn’t need to finish off what was all but a formality as Mikhail Kukushkin retired, giving Murray a pass into the quarterfinal round in early action on Sunday night.

Murray quickly took the first two sets in his fourth-round match, putting away Kukushkin 6-1 in each. And following the 15th game, Kukushkin could go no further, succumbing to the heat and an ailing hip. The match lasted just 49 minutes, with Kukushkin’s decision to withdraw coming only five minutes, and one game, into the third set.

It’s the same dilemma we face every March in the NCAA Tournament: do we root for crazy upsets early on, even if it means lesser matchups in later rounds? Do we root for that 16-seed to finally take out that 1-seed, even if it means they will likely get smoked in the second round? Or do we grit our teeth and hope for chalk so that it’s heavyweight-versus-heavyweight in the second week?

Personally, I tend to root for upsets despite myself. But in this year’s Aussie Open, we get to see what happens when most of the favorite slip through to the second week, especially on the men’s side. We have two quarterfinal matchups so far: Rafael Nadal vs. Tomas Berdych, and Roger Federer vs. Juan Martin del Potro. (And even if Berdych gets crushed by Nadal, as he typically does, that match will have extra entertainment value after Berdych got booed off the court on Day 7.) We love the Cinderella story -- Michael Chang at the French in 1989, qualifier Boris Becker at Wimbledon in 1985 -- but the slipper rarely actually fits. And if things go according to plan today, we could be looking at another pair of wonderful men’s quarters, and some killer women’s matches as well, like Wozniacki-Clijsters and, potentially, Williams-Sharapova.